Israel's Apartheid Wall Draws Loud Criticism in Berkeley Protest

Berkeley, CA. As Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and so-called Israeli and Palestinian moderates sat in a Swiss chalet to discuss the future of Palestinians, Israeli soldiers set explosives in a tiny refugee camp near Ramallah. The Associated Press reported that dozens of Ramallah's residents took to the streets in protest, where they were met with Israeli soldiers firing live ammunition into the crowd. Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli bullets, including nine-year old Mazen Hamdan. (It is noted that despite the complete absence of suicide attacks in Israel in two months, the killing and maiming of civilians in a peaceful demonstration, along with mortar attacks elsewhere, did not warrant a mention in the New York Times).

On the University of California-Berkeley's Sproul Plaza today, Students for Justice in Palestine, which launched a divestment from Israel campaign in 2001, built a 12-by-40 foot wall to highlight the encroaching Israeli "Apartheid Wall" on Palestinian land. Protestors drew attention to the Israeli government's wall which began as a 225 km barrier in its "first phase," and promises to stretch over 650 km in its expanse over the Occupied Territories. Several Israelis at the protests held up signs that read: "Another Israeli Against the Occupation. Two of the five slated speakers at the demonstration were Israeli, including an army refusenik.

According to the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON) , the wall, which will in its full dimension cut the West Bank in half, has severed Palestinians from access to basic services, work, and their land, the very things that ensure survival. In some areas, the 8-by-100 feet wall combines concrete, electric fences, barbed wires, sensors, and lined watchtowers to virtually isolate and carve up the West Bank into effective ghettoes. Sixty percent of water resources in these communities have been collapsed, and nearly 80 percent of fertile lands in the areas have been encapsulated. Estimates report that more than 102,000 trees have been uprooted in first phase alone.

Responding to Israel's claim that this fence is about security, Mohamed Raad, one of the SJP organizers, says, "Why would you need to confiscate so much land and water, and bulldoze so many homes, if this was about security? What sense does this make?"

In reality, the idea of the wall is not new, whether as concept or physical entity, as its inception preceded the beginning of the Intifada. Whatever the Israeli government and military's supposed motivations are, and how we are truly to know them, the expectation is the same: it is another encapsulating barrier that will further isolate and impoverish Palestinian communitites.

For opponents of the wall, the financial stakes are high, since US taxpayers, including students, faculty and retiree pensioners of the public institution of the University of California, aid in its funding. At over 650 km (should the project continue as Israel plans), at the cost of $2 million per km, the wall will cost Americans over $1.5 billion. Beyond the financial responsibility, however, organizers maintain that the US must view the wall as has the international community, in other words, not as just another set of abuses against Palestinians, but a brokered project along with land confiscation and control, the annexation of settlements, land and air attacks, and so on, in order to make life unliveable for Palestinians.

Citing the World Bank's report on the Wall, PENGON says that some 25 to 30 percent of the population in the wall's affected communities are registered refugees. The refugee population around the town of Qalqilya is as high as 70 percent. All of them are cut off from services at the only hospital in Qalqilya, run by the UN's relief agency.