Palestine
Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter, 2006, Excerpts
Israel leaders have
embarked on a series of unilateral decisions, bypassing both Washington and the
Palestinians. Their presumption is that an encircling barrier will finally
resolve the Palestinian problem. Utilizing their political and military
dominance, they are imposing a system of partial withdrawal, encapsulation, and
apartheid on the Muslim and Christian citizens of the occupied territories. The
driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in
South Africa – not racism, but the acquisition of land. There has been a
determined and remarkably effective effort to isolate settlers from
Palestinians, so that a Jewish family can commute from Jerusalem to their
highly subsidized home deep in the West Bank on roads from which others are excluded,
without ever coming in contact with any facet of Arab life.
The governments of
Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert have built the fence and wall entirely within
Palestinian territory, intruding deeply into the West bank to encompass Israeli
settlement blocs and large areas of other Palestinian land. It is projected to
be at least three and a half times as long as Israel’s internationally
recognized border and already cuts directly through Palestinian villages and
divides families from their gardens and farmland. One example is that the
wandering wall almost completely surrounds the Palestinian city of Qalqiliya
with its 45,000 inhabitants, with most of the citizens’ land and about
one-third of their water supply confiscated by the Israelis. Almost the same
encirclement has occurred around 170,000 citizens of Bethlehem’s.
A wide swath must be
bulldozed through communities before the wall can be built. In addition to the
concrete and electrified fencing materials used in the construction of, the
barrier includes two-meter-deep trenches, road for patrol vehicles, electronic
ground and fence sensors, thermal imaging and video cameras, sniper towers, and
razor wire – all on Palestinian land. The area between the segregation barrier
and the Israeli border has been designated a closed military region for an
indefinite period of time. Israeli directives state that every Palestinian over
the age of twelve living in the closed area has to obtain a “permanent resident
permit” for the civil administration to enable them to continue to live in
their own homes. They are considered to be aliens, without the rights of
Israeli citizens.
The wall ravages many
places along its devious route that are important to Christians. In addition to
enclosing Bethlehem in one of its most notable intrusions, an especially heart
breaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite
place for Jesus and his disciples, and very near Bethany, where they often
visited Mary, Martha, and their brother, Lazarus. There is a church named for
one the sisters, Santa Marta monastery, where Israel’s thirty-foot concrete
wall cuts through the property. The house of worship is now on the Jerusalem
side, and its parishioners are separated from it because they cannot get
permits to enter Jerusalem.
In addition of
cutting off about 200,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem from their relatives,
property, schools, and businesses, the wall is designed to complete the
enclosure of a severely truncated Palestine, a small portion of its original size,
compartmentalized, divided into cantons, occupied by Israeli forces, and
isolated from the outside world. In addition, a network of exclusive highways
is being built across even these fragments of the West bank to connect the new
Greater Israel in the west with the occupied Jordan river valley in the east,
where 7,000 Jews are living in twenty-one heavily protected settlements among
50,000 Palestinians who are still permitted to stay there.
It is obvious that
the Palestinians will be left with no territory in which to establish a viable
state, but completely enclosed within the barrier and the occupied Jordan River
valley. The Palestinians will have a future impossible for them or any
responsible portion of the international community to accept, and Israel’s
permanent status will be increasingly troubled and uncertain as deprived people
fight oppression and the relative number of Jewish citizens decreases
demographically [compared to Arabs] both within Israel and in Palestine. This
prospect is clear to most Israelis, who also view it as a distortion of their
values. Recent events involving Gaza and Lebanon demonstrates the inevitable
escalation in tension and violence within Palestine and stronger resentment and
animosity from the world community against both Israel and America.
