TEL AVIV, 31 August 2003 — This slogan was born spontaneously. We were demonstrating at the wall in Kalkiliya, at the place where the wall turns into a fence and turns east, penetrating deep into the Palestinian territory. On the opposite side of the wall, the Palestinians were demonstrating. We were looking for a short rhyme to be transmitted by megaphone. A common effort gave birth to the seven words that told the whole message.
Skeptics will smile. After all, this is not the wall of Jericho, which could be destroyed by sounding the trumpets. The people who build this obstacle want it to stand for eternity, much as “united” Jerusalem will be the “eternal capital of Israel”. The Israeli right has no concept of time less than eternity. But in the Israeli left there are also some people who believe that the wall has created an “irreversible” situation. Why do I smile? Because I remember other “irreversible” situations. And other “eternities” too.
Our wall is frequently being compared to the Berlin Wall. Visually and politically, this is a valid comparison. But the “Berlin Wall” was no only an urban monstrosity. It cut all of Germany into two and extended from the Baltic Sea in the north to the border of Czechoslovakia in the south — almost a thousand km, approximately the same as Sharon’s monster after completion.
In Germany, too, it was a huge obstacle, a combination of walls and fences, watchtowers and shooting positions, “death zones” and patrol paths. It divided the country, wounded the landscape and separated parents from children. An awesome monster, arousing fear and loathing, declaring might and finality.
Especially finality. Everyone who saw it felt that this was a point of no return in German history. This separation is eternal. There is no sense in fighting against it.
Indeed, serious politicians based their policy on the wall’s eternity. Left and right resigned themselves to the fact. No serious commentator tried to deny it. The situation was “irreversible”.
And then, one day, like a completely unforeseen eruption of a volcano, it just happened. The terrible wall disappeared, as if by itself. A slip of the tongue of a Communist minister, a moment of indecision of the police, the gathering of a crowd — and the “irreversible” became eminently “reversible”. Like the dinosaurs, the terrible monster disappeared from the earth.
(Some time before, I went by car from the West to Berlin. I had to pass a DDR border station. Fearful Vopos (Volkspolizei) with unmoving faces and raw commands: Hand over you passport. Sit there. Wait. No “please”, “thank you” and “excuse me”. Like the Nazis in Hollywood movies. The uniform. The arms. The behavior. Everything.
Some days after the fall of the wall I passed there again. The same policemen were sitting there, but they were unrecognizable. Smiles from ear to ear. Unbounded civility. Please Sir, Thank you Sir, would you please. Just a moment. Obviously not only the wall is reversible, the people are reversible, too.
There is, of course, a basic difference between the German and the Israeli walls. East Germany had a border fixed by international agreement (between the Soviet Union and the Western allies). The wall was built entirely on this line. Its path was self-evident. Here there is no agreement, no border, no self-evident path. Everything is determined by anonymous planners.
It is easy to imagine them sitting in the air-conditioned office, a map spread in front of them. A very special map, because it shows Jewish settlements and bypass roads. The Palestinian towns and villages do not appear on this map. As if the ethnic- cleansing, that so many in Israel (and the government) long for, had already happened.
That is what’s so special about this Wall: It is inhuman. The planners have completely ignored the existence of (non-Jewish) human beings. They took into account hills and valleys, settlements and bypass roads. But they totally ignored the Palestinian villages, their inhabitants and their fields. As if they were not there.
— Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist and peace activist. His essays are included in The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
