“Israel’s Great Wall” has been transformed before its completion into an important issue in the Arab-Israel struggle. A wall with an initial length of 100 kilometers and likely to extend to more than 500 kilometers is in the eyes of the Israelis an additional security platoon to limit Palestinian guerrilla infiltration operations. From the Palestinian point of view the wall is a process to tear the land apart and create an occupational reality, imprisoning around two and a half million Palestinians in the West Bank. However, the truth is that we have only heard the emotional side of the story to the extent that the wall has become the Palestinian “wailing wall”. Priorities have shifted away from focusing on regaining the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip to halting or destroying the wall as part of an international diplomatic campaign.
In my view the Palestinians will lose a lot as a result of focusing on fighting the wall and not what lies behind it. The one aim that should not be missed by the Palestinian political leadership is liberating the occupied land and not reforming or modifying its situation, or arguing over the legality of the construction process. The Palestinians and Arabs will from now on find themselves focusing their concern on preventing Israel from completing the security wall after spending time and energy over the past few months in the Security Council, the General Assembly, the European Union and even the White House trying to prevent the construction and explain its illegal violations.
All this in my view is a waste of time and effort because there is a Palestinian role that has been neglected. Adopting the recent Geneva agreement is more important than destroying the wall that in my opinion has limited value to both parties.
If the Geneva agreement had been developed to serve as the Arab-Palestinian as well as an international project it would have actually eliminated the wall. It would be capable of destroying the greater wall; that is the border drawn on the map from Lebanon to Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
It is true the Israeli intention is to score many gains at the same time. The wall will isolate the Palestinians, and lessen the infiltrations and the flow of laborers while creating new borderlines and consequently undermine the Palestinian negotiating ability. However, the Israelis know that electric walls and surveillance operations did not succeed in preventing Palestinian operations in the past and this wall of bricks will not succeed either.
Even if the Israelis raised the height of two-meter wall with another meter, it will not prevent any more from climbing over it nor would it result in the infiltrators being electrocuted. All they need is just one meter beneath it. Infiltrators have mastered this tunnel game as shown in Gaza where tunnels were being used to smuggle fighters, weapons and cigarettes. So what are the Israelis going to do then? In the end they will have to accept peace and by then they would have spent $6 billion on the wall and thousands of innocent lives would have been killed and injured on both sides.
This is the situation for the Israelis who are never tired of coming up with new absurd security ideas regardless of how high the cost might be. As for Arabs — and Palestinians in particular — the wall is not their battle, but peace is. They should present a peace plan capable of putting the Israelis before two extremely dangerous options: a genuine peace that will put an end to their security torment and meet the demand for establishing the Palestinian state, or continue live in a constant state of war over or under the wall.
