Protesting Israel's apartheid wall

Israel is building a wall, known as the security or the apartheid wall, that stretches at least 360 kilometers long, with plans for a extensions and a second wall adding an additional 700 kilometers. Without the extensions or the second wall, this wall will be approximately three times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall. The wall is alternately barbed and razor wire, and concrete. Where it is concrete, it is 25 feet high, with periodic watch towers to house Israeli military. In addition to this, the wall requires a buffer zone of between 30 and 100 meters. This buffer zone has plans to house electric wire, sensors, cameras, security personnel, and more.

The wall is being built often deep inside the 1967 green line, meaning that Israel is confiscating Palestinian land. It is estimated that at least 10 per cent of the land in the West Bank will belong to Israel, after the wall is complete. The wall is currently being constructed in the Qalqiliya, Tulkarem, Jenin, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem areas.

The wall is impacting the lives of the Palestinians in some very fundamental and significant ways. In order to make way for the wall, fertile orchards and fields are being bulldozed, and homes are being destroyed. In many cases, family land falls on the other side of the wall, and people cannot access their fields. Additionally, 36 water wells will fall on the Israeli side of the wall, and another 14 are threatened with destruction because they are in the wall’s buffer zone. Some communities will lose their only source of water.

Approximately 200,000 people live in the area of the wall in the northern West Bank; 11,550 people are trapped between the wall and the green line, and 20,000 people live on one side of the wall, but their agricultural land is on the other side of the wall. The land confiscation and destruction and the restriction of movement will cost the communities 6,500 jobs. In addition, olive trees that produce 2,200 tons of olive oil each year will be destroyed. Also fields and orchards that produce 50 tons of fruit and 100,000 ton of vegetables each year will be destroyed. 10,000 grazing animals will not longer have access to their pastures. In addition, stores, factories, schools, and homes have been ordered destroyed.