Editor’s
Note:
Viewpoint offers articles and essays one is not likely
to read in your local newspaper. The Middle East cannot
be understood by conventional “left/right” dichotomies.
Today we have a view of the separation wall between
Israel and Palestinians written by Noam Chomsky.
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A Wall as a Weapon -by Noam Chomsky
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - It is a virtual reflex for
governments to plead security concerns when they
undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext
for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order.
Israel's so-called security fence, which is the subject
of hearings starting today at the International Court of
Justice in The Hague, is a case in point.
Few would question Israel's right to protect its
citizens from terrorist attacks like the one yesterday,
even to build a security wall if that were an
appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall
would be built if security were the guiding concern:
inside Israel, within the internationally recognized
border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49
war.
The wall could then be as forbidding as the authorities
chose: patrolled by the army on both sides, heavily
mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize
security, and there would be no international protest or
violation of international law.
This observation is well understood. While Britain
supports America's opposition to the Hague hearings, its
foreign minister, Jack Straw, has written that the wall
is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who inspected
the "security fence," said it should be on the Green
Line or "indeed on the Israeli side of the line."
A British parliamentary investigative commission also
called for the wall to be built on Israeli land,
condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate" Israeli
"strategy of bringing the population to heel."
What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian
lands. It is also - as the Israeli sociologist Baruch
Kimmerling has described Israel's war of "politicide"
against the Palestinians - helping turn Palestinian
communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans
of South Africa look like symbols of freedom,
sovereignty and self-determination.
Even before construction of the barrier was under way,
the United Nations estimated that Israeli barriers,
infrastructure projects and settlements had created 50
disconnected Palestinian pockets in the West Bank. As
the design of the wall was coming into view, the World
Bank estimated that it might isolate 250,000 to 300,000
Palestinians, more than 10 percent of the population,
and that it might effectively annex up to 10 percent of
West Bank land. And when the government of Ariel Sharon
finally published its proposed map, it became clear the
the wall would cut the West Bank into 16 isolated
enclaves, confined to just 42 percent of the West Bank
land that Mr. Sharon had previously said could be ceded
to a Palestinian state.
The wall has already claimed some of the most fertile
lands of the West Bank. And, crucially, it extends
Israel's control of critical water resources, which
Israel and its settlers can appropriate as they choose,
while the indigenous population often lacks water for
drinking.
Palestinians in the seam between the wall and the Green
Line will be permitted to apply for the right to live in
their own homes; Israelis automatically have the right
to use these lands. "Hiding behind security rationales
and the seemingly neutral bureaucratic language of
military orders is the gateway for expulsion," the
Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in the daily Haaretz.
"Drop by drop, unseen, not so many that it would be
noticed internationally and shock public opinion." The
same is true of the regular killings, terror and daily
brutality and humiliation of the past 35 years of harsh
occupation, while land and resources have been taken for
settlers enticed by ample subsidies.
It also seems likely that Israel will transfer to the
occupied West Bank the 7,500 settlers it said this month
it would remove from the Gaza Strip. These Israelis now
enjoy ample land and fresh water, while one million
Palestinians barely survive, their meager water supplies
virtually unusable. Gaza is a cage, and as the city of
Rafah in the south is systematically demolished,
residents may be blocked from any contact with Egypt and
blockaded from the sea.
It is misleading to call these Israeli policies. They
are American-Israeli policies - made possible by
unremitting United States military, economic and
diplomatic support of Israel. This has been true since
1971 when, with American support, Israel rejected a full
peace offer from Egypt, preferring expansion to
security. In 1976, the United States vetoed a Security
Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement in
accord with an overwhelming international consensus. The
two-state proposal has the support of a majority of
Americans today, and could be enacted immediately if
Washington wanted to do so.
At most, the Hague hearings will end in an advisory
ruling that the wall is illegal. It will change nothing.
Any real chance for a political settlement – and for
decent lives for the people of the region - depends on
the United States.
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Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of
"Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global
Dominance."
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