The Israeli Apartheid Wall
Today was an extremely full day that started bright and early at 8AM. Well, for me the day started at 5:00AM. After going to bed at about 11PM the night before, I found myself lying in bed staring at the ceiling at 5. I tried to force myself back to sleep, but I couldn’t do it. After showering and getting dressed, I made my way to the roof of the hostel. And in the pre-dawn hours of a beautiful Jerusalem morning I shared in conversation with a fellow delegate and we watched the sunrise in this beautiful place.
The beauty of the sunrise, however, was quickly eclipsed by the facts on the ground which we learned about during a tour with a amazing guide named Miya from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. She’s an extremely passionate 20-something Israeli female who gave us a crash course on the modern history of this complex conflict. After sharing stats, facts, and maps from Jeff Halper’s lastest book, Obstacles to Peace, we left the lecture hall and piled up in our bus to take a tour of East Jerusalem.
It was a tour that was almost surreal. I’ve blogged about the blatant racism, discrimination, and oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Government over the years, but being up close and personal is a whole different story. We toured East Jerusalem – the Palestinian side of Jerusalem (with pretty big caveats called Jewish settlements) and saw how they were being forced to live in utter squalor within what Jeff Halper calls a “matrix of control.” It’s much deeper and complex than I can go into right now, but to give those who are unfamiliar a picture of what the situation is like here, think about Jim Crow laws, Black Codes, segregation, racism, and lynching of people of African descent in the states. I propose that when you can put that mental image in your mind, you are very close to envisioning what I’m seeing here right now.
I have to leave now, but real quick – the picture above is a photograph of a wall that has at least two names. The Israeli Government calls it the “security fence” and the many Palestinians and their allies call it the “Apartheid Wall.” We saw this wall today and learned about how it is used to intentionally make life unbearable for Palestinians in the West Bank – separating family members, making employment difficult if not impossible, making freedom of movement impossible, and by way of its placement – snatching even more land from the Palestinians. Many would conclude that the Israeli Government is trying to ethnically cleanse the land of all Palestinians and if that’s so – this wall is an integral part of that plan. It sounds like “Apartheid Wall” fits better.
That’s all I have time for tonight, but stay tuned. More updates are on the way.
Salaam.
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