In Israel they call it “the wall” — a more comfortable and acceptable terminology to describe the system of fortresses that are being erected on Palestinian land in the West Bank. In the West they call it “the fence”, which inadequately describes the edifices it is made up of. Eight-meter high cement fences, metal walls with electronic sensors, four-meter deep trenches on either side, sandy pathways to hide any tracks, no man’s land, areas limited to military patrols and observation towers with shots being fired in a 200 meter radius — all these are components of what is being innocuously termed “the wall”. These facts were published in Ha’aretz newspaper by Ameer Haas.

These fortresses will encircle the Palestinian state and divide it into three separate entities not including Jerusalem (which Israel is working at ridding of all non-Jews). The fortresses have already begun to divide thousands of people in villages and towns along the wall from their neighbors. Thousands of Palestinians have lost their land and source of income and all the money they had invested in agricultural projects. The World Bank estimates that by the time the wall is completed roughly 95,000 to 200,000 Palestinians will have been disadvantaged by it. Meanwhile in Israel they complain about the slow pace of construction.

With this wall, Sharon aims to change many of the variables there and work toward expanding Israel rather than guaranteeing Israel’s security.

The reality is that the Israeli leadership no matter what party it may belong to will never agree to a Palestinian state. In addition to being a direct threat to Israel’s existence (from the Jewish point of view) a Palestinian state would also end all Jewish/Zionist hopes for a Greater Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile.

The dividing wall — which the American administration only hesitantly objected to for fear of angering Sharon — will achieve many of the objectives that serve Israel: First of all it will take away a portion of Palestinian land, some for land to be occupied by the wall itself and some that is annexed where the wall pushes into Palestinian territory which its rightful owners will not be allowed to access.

Secondly the wall will restrict the movement of Palestinians and therefore dangerously restrict their economic activity. The state of siege as well as poverty and various pressures on Palestinians will drive a great many of them to leave Palestine, thus indirectly aiding the Israeli policy of emptying the land.

Finally the dividing wall will break up the Palestinian land in a way that makes it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to control. This will make Israel’s point that the Palestinians cannot govern themselves and they must remain under Israeli occupation and mandate.

The American administration promised the Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen that it would pressure Israel to stop building the wall, but at the same time it announced its complete understanding of Israel’s security concerns, which are driving it to insist on building the wall.

It is Washington’s new approach to dealing with the Arabs to hope that they can be assuaged with diplomatic rhetoric rather than action. In a gesture that expressed the degree of the US administration’s sympathy for Israel, Bush Jr. gave Sharon a souvenir — a map of the state of Israel made in 1678 and including all the regional states as well as old Assyria and Babylonia. In other words, it was a Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates in accordance with present-day Zionist delusions, Zionist Protocols and the Torah and the Bible.

Bush is flirting with Sharon while Abu Mazen has to make do with some diplomatic words which will take the peace process nowhere near the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005 which Bush had promised him.

Arab News Opinion 18 August 2003