One of the first things you realise when you come to Israel is that it is a very very small country. I learnt that in the most shocking manner in my first week here. From the terrace of a six-storey building in suburban Tel Aviv my host pointed to some hills that seemed pretty far away then, and said, “Well, those hills you see there, are the Judean Hills.” Calling them the Judean Hills is one way of saying, “Hey look, that’s Palestine.”
To me, every city in Israel is just a suburb of Tel Aviv. Unless you go all the way to the north or south of Israel. While this surely means that Israel is a small country, it also goes to show that her adversaries are not that far away. The country stands as a formidable force in a region surrounded by ‘enemies’.
As a formidable force, Israel has gone ahead with some ideas that I think are pure bat-shit crazy. I speak of the separation wall; the concrete wall (6-8 metres high) that is sometimes replaced by an electric fence along the border between Israel and Palestine. Depending on what one’s policy or beliefs are, this wall has many names — separation barrier, West Bank barrier, security fence and apartheid wall. The wall was commissioned in 2002 when the second Intifada was at its peak to regulate entry of Palestinians from West Bank into Israel, thereby reducing terrorist attacks/suicide bombing originating from the West Bank.
If you imagined that this wall would run along the Green Line (1949 Armistice Line) you would be dead wrong. For, this wall bends, loops and snakes around the West Bank on a route that is 709 km long, twice the length of the Green Line. Eighty-five percent of this wall runs inside the West Bank, and not on the Green Line, eating into private Palestinian lands, imposing restrictions on movement and violating human rights. As of 2014, one fifth of the wall was yet to be completed.
The legality of the wall is no doubt contested and the International Court of Justice has aired its opinion on the matter. Since it was concluded that the Court did not have jurisdiction in the matter, the Court could only act as an advisory body.
In 2004 the Court pointed out that Israel cannot argue that ‘the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply in the Occupied Territories because the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were never part of a sovereign state’. According to the Court, because the Palestinian territories came under Israel’s control following Israel’s victory in the war with Jordan and Egypt both of which are party to the Convention, the Israel must exercise control over the Palestinian Territories in accordance with the provisions of the Convention. It concluded that Israel must stop building the wall and roll back any and all orders relating to the construction of the wall.
Yet, Israel continues to build the wall inch by inch…
Today, we watch the news and guffaw at The Donald when he says he wants to build a wall. The scale is enormous, yes, making it far more ridiculous than the Israeli separation barrier; but we do see it as a joke. I do not remember knowing much about the proposal to build the separation wall back in 2002, so I do not know if a section of the public watching the nightly news laughed out when they heard of Israel’s plan.
Thirteen years on, the joke is on us now, isn’t it?
When you are face to face with a wall in an hour’s journey from Tel Aviv, all you feel is shock. Coming from a large country like India, whenever I take up trips to Palestine, it takes me a few minutes to organise my thoughts in line with what one would do while going to a foreign country. I have made the mistake once of travelling to Hebron with just 20-30 NIS (about 8USD) in my wallet, confident that I have my Israeli debit card with me. It is another story altogether that I entered through an Israeli settlement that had an ATM of my Israeli bank. Some relief that, no?
Even after all the trips across the border, I sit up alert and vigilant when I see the separation wall. I try to make sense of what it means to cross check posts everyday to go to school or to work and God forbid to a hospital. Sometimes, you might see two roads, one on which you are travelling and another that’s for Palestinians only. The traffic on the road is flowing in the same direction, yet, you have a separate road. Your road has privileges, your road runs parallel to the wall. A dull wall on the other side of which are people with dreams, aspirations, ambitions but all stunted by a wall in some places and in others by the mere shadow of that wall.
I cannot say I understand it. I never may really make sense of it all. At the very least, I know on which side of the wall my sympathies lie.
Super blog! Looks like you too are new to Israel. A very warm welcome.
Terrorism is very difficult to deal with, isn’t it? And most of our (country’s/goverment’s) reactions seem to be of the knee-jerk types. But I don’t know what I would do given the many constraints.
Hey! Glad you like the blog. Thank you.
As for terrorism, it is always difficult to deal with, I guess. There are always two sides to an coin; sometimes one side just has a louder voice than the other.
Indeed! Didn’t Winston Churchill say, “For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.” or the more cliched, “Until the lions write their own history, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” My sympathies too lie, often, with the presently oppressed but I do understand that it is quite complicated.