The Apartheid wall that is being placed in the West Bank conjures up for most people memories of the beginning of this occupation 56 years ago when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced from their lands into exile in the camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and in the occupied territories. In 2004 we are beginning to hear of the same thing in villages annexed by the path of the apartheid wall. Towns such as Nezlit Ziad in the West Bank have seen 40 percent of their population in exile in Jordan and abroad, because the wall has cut them off from any hopes of economic livelihood, water, family or any normal existence trapped between two walls in isolation. The effects of the apartheid wall are not difficult to see if one only looks to the massacre of the Gaza strip in past weeks where over 50 people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed. Gaza is already surrounded by a concrete wall, making it the largest prison in the world, where it can be made into three Bantustans by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as they please. Without any resources, and being at the whim of the occupation’s brutality, with no where to go and completely silenced by the wall, no one can go in except the soldiers who plunder Gaza.
The wall that is currently being built around the West Bank has become a very depressing subject among those who attempt to show solidarity with Palestinian resistance. Yet resistance of the wall poses questions of hope in that resistance, particularly in how it is being resisted and the role of internationals directly in solidarity in Palestine and around the world.
There is also an assumption that the wall is a very drastic and new measure by Sharon in response to Palestinian resistance. However, given the size of this project and how well built the wall is, such a project to solidify the occupation could not be a spontaneous move. The apartheid wall is envisioned to take away a majority of the water, irrigable farmland and access to entire areas in the West Bank. By building the wall around the settlements in the West Bank, Israel has been able to carve out Jerusalem permanently and turn the West Bank into three separate Bantustans.
The wall costs roughly a million dollars a mile, and the construction itself has been used as a dividing tactic since Palestinian labour is being used as a way to shame Palestinians and make them beg for employment that will ultimately be the death of their liberation. Sharon and the Occupation government have publicly stated that settlements will be dismantled in the West Bank to appease world opinion. Parts of the peace camp have taken this to heart and not looked at what is really happening on the ground. The path of the apartheid wall has been the path of the settlements in the West Bank, not for the intentions of sovereignty but to carve the West Bank and annex land. The placements of settlements were partly designed to isolate Palestinian territory, even without a wall. The wall helps to create such permanent carvings of the occupied territories without ever having to dismantle the majority of settlements.
Many on the left have called for “realistic demands” around the struggle against the wall in order to appease a broader audience. Many have demanded that the wall be built along the 1967 borders. A look at the wall shows how unrealistic that is. Palestinians are not asking for the wall to be moved – they want it down permanently. They resist the construction of the wall because if the 67 borders become solidified, 4 million refugees would not be able to return to their land and the wall will become part of a larger apartheid. They resist because the wall is being built to facilitate ethnic cleansing, mass exodus and to create a permanent divide, a permanent occupation. The wall itself is the problem, not just the boundaries of where it is being built.
The question for a movement which aims to be in direct solidarity with those who are resisting in Palestine against apartheid is not hypothetical demands, or for us to pick and choose boundaries. Those who live there, whose land has been stolen, are calling for the wall to be torn down. For westerners to say this is not feasible would be opportunistic and violate any claims of solidarity. Those who are trying to fight the wall, who are mobilizing and risking their lives and livelihood on countless occasions, have proven that it can be done.
The “stop the wall” campaign in Palestine has been trying to mobilize not just Palestinians but others around the world to create an international movement against apartheid which calls for the end of all construction of the wall and return of all lands stolen by the wall. This resistance around the wall has been growing in the face of massive repression, even in areas in Palestine where resistance in this intifada had been more limited. This unprecedented mobilization has seen the wall come down more than once across the West Bank.
I had the honour to participate in seeing the wall be torn down last summer in the village of Anin, east of Jenin. Last summer saw a major campaign and a series of demonstrations against the wall during the International Solidarity Movement’s “Freedom Summer” Campaign. One of the most important took place in late July 2003 in Anin, where over 11,000 dunams of land (a dunam is a quarter acre) were confiscated by the wall. In a village where starvation becomes an increasing reality daily and which relied on its olive trees, a false farmers gate, covered by razor wire and military jeeps, ensured no farmer could reach their lands on the other side of the wall. The people in Anin no longer wanted demonstrations that would have no impact, but wanted to attack the gate and the wall itself. In a massive show of solidarity, Palestinians, Israeli anarchists and internationals marched to the gate and to the wall. We were met by scores of military jeeps and soldiers who fired rubber coated bullets and tear gas. We attacked the gate, swinging it open and tearing down meters of the wall. Though several people were injured and gassed, it was a massive success, as an example of the way some have wanted the intifada to move toward. An international movement of solidarity in breaking down the barriers, led by the Palestinians who suffer the most in actions, and including Israelis, has inspired people across the West Bank and around the world. This is the way in which the movement against apartheid must continue.
Since then, in scores of villages and cities there have been numerous demonstrations. The two most important examples of this resistance have been Budrus and Biddu near Ramallah, which has seen the most intense resistance against the wall. Beginning in January, construction came with bulldozers, tanks, checkpoints and a complete curfew. The women of the village of Budrus resisted. Wafa, a school teacher in Budrus, recounts the first in a series of demonstrations and direct actions against the construction of the wall in their village:
“The women arrived first. They tried to reach the land but the Occupation Forces attacked them and began beating them and trying to pull them off of the land, using repulsive language to incite the men and push them to come down to the lands. On Thursday’s demonstration (January 1) it was the women who blocked the streets and burnt the tires. The women were also helping in taking those wounded by the Occupation Forces to the ambulances.”
Since New Year’s Day, there have been demonstrations daily blocking settler roads, stopping the bulldozers with their bodies, marching toward the wall and halting the destruction of Biddu and Budrus. The leader of the popular committee was arrested in a massive pre-dawn military raid by the occupation forces and five people have been killed in Biddu alone since the demonstrations began. But the construction has been stopped.
“The more we feel helpless the more we feel angry. We are doing nothing. We just sit on our lands, they come and shoot tear gas, beat us with their battalions and shoot bullets at us. Every night they come to our houses and arrest people. They are trying to suppress the people’s resistance, but the more the Wall comes near our lands, where thousands of ancient olive trees will be uprooted, the more we become insistent on stopping them.”
Movements in the West must address how to show solidarity with this part of the struggle against apartheid which is taking the lead in this phase of intifadah, and how we can assist to facilitate a more international struggle that continues to have a real impact on the occupation.
In Europe there has been a concerted effort to block trade agreements with Israel on the basis that the apartheid wall is a continuation of human rights violations in Palestine. As an international movement we can make the occupation cost more than it benefits. The economic situation in Israel is in shambles even with unprecedented support from the United States. With general strikes in Israel last November and the economic impact and expense of the military occupation and wall construction, we have to utilize and exploit this economic situation. In the US and London there have been successful campaigns to boycott Israeli goods and a campaign against Caterpillar which makes the D-9 bulldozers used to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes. Campaigns in the US such as S.U.S.T.A.I.N. (Stop U.S. Tax Aid to Israel Now) are campaigning to end US funding of Israel. Here in Canada we have an economic target in the Canadian Israeli Free Trade Agreement, valued at $480 million. There is the possibility and ability to create a movement to end this trade agreement which corporations and the government use to profit from the occupation. Israel continues to flaunt its continued apartheid in spite of international opinion. It is an obligation for us to look at what can be done here in Canada to disrupt the ongoing occupation of Palestine and to fight the apartheid wall and show solidarity with people such as those in Budrus.