Jamal Juma, Jerusalem
Over the last two months there has been a wide-scale escalation of popular resistance confronting the ever-intensifying Israeli occupation. The Ramallah demonstration on March 14 reflected the highpoint of mobilisation against the apartheid wall currently happening across the West Bank.
The Palestinian struggle has escalated against a backdrop of political developments that are designed to make Palestinians passive subjects while the racist colonisation of the apartheid wall project continues unabated on their land. These can be summarised as the Sharm el Sheikh conference, the announcement by the occupation forces that they were making "modifications" to the wall, the conference in London and the increasingly obvious attitude of the UN which has chosen to pursue the issue of the apartheid wall in "humanitarian" terms.
The issue of the wall was negated in the Sharm el Sheikh meetings, only surfacing in a meek joint statement noting it to be a "controversial issue". Furthermore, the outcome of the conference stressed the need for a "calming" period in Palestinian resistance and activity. This was expected to occur while the wall and the Israeli settlements continued to expand. Indeed, the occupation forces have used the de facto impasse to pick up the pace of the "third phase" of the wall, which started in the south during November 2004. Particular fervour has gone into construction of the sections of the wall around Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Ignoring the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision calling for the dismantling of the wall, while consolidating the desire of the US and the European Union (EU) to see a re-routing of the wall's path, the Israeli government announced a "modification" plan.
Although some changes in the its route were made in individual villages, the wall and its network of Jewish-only settlements, roads and military zones continues as before in the rest of the West Bank, annexing some 47% of it. It will still leave Palestinians in ghettos or semi-ghettos, linked together with tunnels and bridges under occupation control.
What is new in this fresh wall route is that it is done under the title of a "disengagement plan" approved by US and EU officials who seem to consider it as part of the "road map".
The Palestinian people realise how the wall draws the features of the final settlement before even beginning negotiations. They totally reject the notion that isolated ghettos being created across the West Bank refer to any kind of "viable state". They recognise that the wall is the bulldozer and catalyst of the expansionist Zionist colonial project in Palestine.
It has now been over eight months since the ICJ's decision that the wall should be halted and dismantled. While it was expected that Israel would reject the decision (it has never been prepared to abide by international law), it was more surprising that the call for the implementation of the ICJ decision had started to dissipate from official Palestinian Authority (PA) discourse. For the EU and the US, the issue has been the wall's path and not the wall itself. Thus, the ICJ decision appears to have been annulled by all parties, except for the Palestinian people, who are using every possible occasion to call for the respect of international law, and the full implementation of the ICJ decision.
The process to normalise the apartheid wall has been a discourse increasingly evident in the UN which prefers to treat it as a "humanitarian", and not political, issue. On his visit to the West Bank last month, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan reiterated previous UN announcements that a damage register office would be established for those affected by the wall. This move is highly alarming in a context where UN pressure on Israel to stop the wall is completely missing.
Moreover, the wealth of reports and statements by UN officials all emphasise the humanitarian implications, ignoring the real issue of the wall's existence, thus serving to legitimise the de facto construction of the apartheid wall.
The ramifications of the sell-out of the Palestinian people, land and struggle had its debut in the conference held in London last month. Foreign ministers, the World Bank and Annan met with officials of the PA to lecture them about "internal reforms", "security matters" and, above all, money.
Up to US$1.2 billion has been promised to the Palestinian Authority. This was slightly more than the minimum amount ($900 million) calculated by the World Bank in its report of December 2004, which appeared to be a do-it-yourself guide book on how to administer an entire people in an open air prison, with detailed analysis of the financial necessities of life behind the apartheid wall.
The bottleneck of the World Bank feasibility study has been solved with the bank volunteering to stump up the money and it is now competing with a US standing offer to fund the project. However, despite the meticulous calculations of the world's most important finance experts and the "generosity" of the donor community, the Palestinian people are not putting their land and lives up for sale.
In Jerusalem, the people of Beit Hanina, Beit Surik, Biddu, Dahya and Ram struggle against the wall being built to isolate Jerusalem from the West Bank. Land has been confiscated for settlement expansion and the Judaisation of Jerusalem in a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The third phase of the wall has led to further construction and land confiscation in Hebron, Yatta and the Old City, and has in turn catalysed residents into struggle against the wall.
In West Ramallah, and in Safa and Belin, clashes have emerged on a daily basis over the last two weeks with Palestinians shot at, injured, detained and tear gassed.
The demonstration on March 14, organised by the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, was the crowning moment in a "month of continuous struggle". The huge attendance of people in the demonstration, from all areas of the West Bank, reflected the popular movement against the wall.
Rejection of the deceitful "modifications to the wall" were emphasised in calls for the restoration of international law and dismantlement of the wall. Criticism was also directed at the official PA position and discourse which has not sought to use the ICJ decision.
However, it was Annan, and the branches of the UN in Palestine, which received the lion's share of people's anger on March 14. Annan failed to utter one word about the necessity to respect international law, and his focus on the register office, suggested the issue is humanitarian and can be solved with few dollars.
The inability to treat the wall as a political issue — one that is intrinsic to the Zionist colonial project for the West Bank — is a deeply disturbing development within the United Nations. What Annan and the UN have stated simply mirrors the rhetoric of the Zionists.
[Abridged from <http://www.stopthewall.org>. Jamal Juma is coordinator of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 6, 2005.
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