October 11, 2003

The UN takes on The Wall

[Bethlehem, West Bank] I was half asleep, but when I flipped on BBC this morning, I thought I heard that the United Nations Security Council will hold a public meeting next Tuesday (Oct 14) on Israel's building of a security fence inside the occupied Palestinian Territory in West Bank. The meeting was called at the request of Syria, which is the only Arab nation currently on the Security Council.

I popped on the Internet to see if I could find any more news. Here are a few paragraphs I pulled from the MSNBC News site from an article by Irwin Arieff, Reuters. (I added the bold on certain text.)

If Israel is allowed to continue construction, ''this will mean the end of the two-state solution, and that will take us to either a more drastic and radical solution or perpetual conflict. It should be looked at that seriously,'' Palestinian U.N. envoy Nasser al-Kidwa said. Al-Kidwa called for a UN Security Council vote on Tuesday on a draft resolution seeking to bar Israel from building the fence on Palestinian land and denouncing plans for more than 600 new homes in Israeli settlements.

Most members feel the wall ''is illegal, and they want to say something about it,'' Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said. But U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte suggested Washington would use its veto to kill the measure.

Negroponte last month vetoed a council resolution demanding Israel back away from announced plans ''to remove'' Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. But Arab nations responded by taking a slightly modified version of the text to the 191-nation UN General Assembly, where the United States does not have a veto. The assembly adopted it by a lopsided 133-4 vote with 15 abstentions. The United States and Israel accounted for half of the ''No'' votes, leaving Washington isolated from European Union states and Russia, fellow members, along with the United Nations, of the quartet of mediators behind the road map to Middle East peace.

Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman dismissed Palestinian suggestions the fence's path was meant to annex Palestinian land beyond Israel's 1967 border or protect Jewish settlements seen as illegal by much of the international community. He also suggested Israel would ignore any resolution trying to block the wall's construction, saying his government's first responsibility was to protect citizens from ''crazy fanatic extremist suicide bombers.''

I still say that there's nothing wrong with Israel building a wall around their country. It's not real neighborly, but it's OK with me. It's fine with me if they build it 25-feet high with security sensors and razor wire and broken glass and trip wires and guard towers and no gates -- as long as it's on their own property. The problem is that they are building the wall deeper and deeper into the Palestinian Territories. I don't know if ANY of the wall is being built on Israeli land. The whole darn thing is inside the Palestinian Territories.

Now to me, this doesn't seem quite right. There's something about my neighbor building his fence (and his settlement homes) inside my property that wouldn't sit well with me. If it wasn't so terribly sad, the entire thing would be pretty funny. I mean who has the audacity to come onto your property and build his house and his fence? Who could be so shameless and arrogant? I live on a farm in Virginia. It's a fantastic, beautiful place. But I wonder how incredulous my father would be if our neighbor just arrived and set up his mobile home in the middle of our cornfield. I'm laughing now just thinking of my father's reaction. (It wouldn't be so funny if it really happened.) He would probably have a little talk with the family as they traded in their mobile home and started building an apartment complex. As the complex grew and roads and walls were built, I wonder what kind of action my father would take. What if the police were no help? I feel pretty sure he wouldn't be so happy about it. Like the Palestinians aren't so happy about the wall and the settlements. Like the international community is not so happy about the wall and the settlements. If you ask me, most of the Palestinians have been remarkably restrained.

Israeli spokespeople say that the wall is necessary, because they have tried "everything" for peace and nothing has worked. Well, they haven't tried everything. They haven't tried the most important thing. They haven't tried leaving the occupied territories. Not once. It seems like in their ultimate quest for peace, that this must have occurred to them.

In Bethlehem

In Beit Sahour

In Beit Sahour

The following two photos are from Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON)

In many places the wall is located near homes, shops and schools. The land confiscated by the wall includes entire villages and some of the most fertile farmland in Palestine. Already much land has been razed with thousands of olive and fruit trees uprooted. Many wells will be confiscated and some villages will lose their only source of water. The fate of many farming families is in doubt, since their residence is on one side of the wall while their farm is on the other. Many job opportunities will be lost, fruit and vegetable production stopped or cut, and livestock farmers with grazing animals will not have access to their grazing lands. I don't thing there's any doubt that the wall is a clear violation of international law.

For more Wall information,

April 04, 2003 The Wall
Jan 03, 2003 Abu Dis Wall