Trapped Like
Mice
By Jamal Juma
13 January 2005
The
Electronic Intifada
In
February 2003, Occupation bulldozers begin placing concrete blocks on
the main Jerusalem-Ramallah Road, the very blocks that were in Abu Dis
and transported to this road following their removal from Abu Dis once
the final, full-size Wall blocks were to ghettoize that
area. (Photo: PENGON/Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign)
Palestine has been
in the headlines of the Western mainstream media again. The preparations
leading up to the elections on January 9 have given everyone enough
news to cover or rather: they have given the media enough news
to cover up what is actually developing on the ground. But it is this
current situation on the ground that will, if it is not stopped in time,
more effectively shape the future for the Palestinian people than any
electoral process ever could.
Away from international
attention, the destiny being prepared for the Palestinian people is
showing its true face more clearly than ever before in the new Israeli
plans presented to the public in the past few months. The Apartheid
Wall, with its horrendous effects on Palestinian life and land, does
not stand alone, but is today merging with the longstanding Israeli
settlement policy and the creation of Jewish-only infrastructure into
a comprehensive scheme for colonial domination and conquest.
An appalling plan
for Palestine is shaping up behind Israeli slogans of "disengagement";
behind the British initiative to revive "the Road Map"; and
behind the U.S. drive to force through the completion of Israeli plans
that finalize the Bantustanization of the Palestinian people. All three
are combining to push for an end to all Palestinian resistance, which
is seen as a pre-condition for controlling the Middle East from Jerusalem
to Baghdad. The U.S. administration in particular is highly aware that
any possible chance of success for the occupation of Iraq, and for U.S.-Israeli
plans to shape the future of the Greater Middle East, depend on their
ability to create "stability" for the Israeli colonial project
of annexation, expulsion, and occupation in Palestine.
Among the recent
plans announced by Israel, some were mere masquerades for the international
media, while others revealed concrete Israeli projects. The latest modification
to the path of the Apartheid Wall was a plan of the first kind. These
supposed modifications were nothing more than the result of U.S. and
international pressure demanding maps that would enable them to defend
the Wall in front of their constituencies and public opinion. The "new
map" of the Wall represents a contorted game of numbers and definitions
that has "lowered" the percentage of West Bank land stolen
and destroyed by the Apartheid Wall to 6.1 percent.
But of course, as
the media and political leaders praising the "new" plan inevitably
fail to point out, this 6.1 percent needs to be added to the 11.8 percent
annexed by the settlements and the 29.1 percent isolated in the Jordan
Valley. Without even taking into account the additional land that has
also been stolen from the Palestinian people for the construction of
the settlers-only roads, this makes a total of 47 percent of the West
Bank, and reveals itself as absolutely no different from the 47 percent
that Israel intended to annex before the supposed modifications.
This game of numbers
is also aimed at re-directing the way that the situation on the ground
is talked about. It steers attention towards the size of the Bantustans
being forced upon the Palestinian people, as if it was not the very
fact that our people are being closed off behind walls that should create
the outrage, rather than the question of whether these ghettos should
be slightly larger. We are not fighting for bigger ghettos or for more
colorful walls, but for liberation and justice in our land.
The real Israeli
political project, meanwhile, can be found in the "disengagement
plan" and the initiatives connected to this plan. The disengagement
plan, far from being a withdrawal or giving the Palestinian people the
right to statehood, demarcates in fact the full Bantustanization of
our people. The rhetoric of the plan hides one of the best-elaborated
and most effectively planned projects for the enslavement and destruction
of an entire people.
This plan consists
of four main construction projects that have been submitted to the public
and are intimately linked to the construction of the Apartheid Wall:
1. The Building
of New Settlements and the Expansion of Existing Settlements
Settlements have
always been at the core of the colonial project to control Palestine.
The so-called "disengagement plan" claims to be about the
dismantling of settlements: that is, the evacuation of settlements in
the Gaza Strip and of four minor settlements in the West Bank near Jenin.
But at the same time, Israel has announced the annexation of all the
other approximately 200 settlements in the Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.
In addition, Israel is currently expanding and constructing new settlements
in the Tulkarem and Qalqiliya areas, ensuring the permanent annexation
of the Palestinian lands isolated by the Wall.
2. More Settlers-Only
"By-Pass" Roads
These fenced bypass
roads, heavily guarded by the Israeli military, are for settlers only
Palestinians are not allowed to use or cross them. These roads
cut through the West Bank and destroy the Palestinian road system, allowing
the settlers free access everywhere while at the same time annexing
lands and isolating Palestinian communities from each other in the same
way the Apartheid Wall does. Israel has announced the construction of
a further 500 km of roads to reinforce this apartheid road network.
This will ensure that Palestinian residential areas are nothing more
than enclosed islands, totally isolated among the settlements and their
road system.
3. Bridges and Tunnels
Israel plans the
construction of sixteen junctions with bridges (which will be guaranteed
freeways for Israelis) and tunnels (which will be controlled passages
for Palestinians, guarded by Israeli occupation forces). These will
be the only passage points for Palestinians needing to travel from one
area or city to another within the West Bank. While providing a facade
of "maximum contiguity" among Palestinian areas to the international
community after all, the claim goes, these junctions connect
the Palestinian Bantustans with each other, thus providing "contiguity"
this project is in fact aimed at guaranteeing full Israeli control
over the West Bank even after a mock "withdrawal" of the Israeli
army. All tunnels will be provided with gates (this is already the case
in the village of Habla, in the Qalqiliya district, where the Palestinian
population is at the mercy of the occupation forces in order to pass
to or from their village), which will enable Israel to impose full curfew
over the West Bank, perpetrate collective punishment at will, and control
all Palestinian life. To do so, it will need no more than sixteen military
cars, one for each junction.
4. The CBIZ (Cross
Border Industrial Zones)
The project of enslaving
the Palestinian people, once we have been completely deprived of land,
resources, trade, and livelihood, will be completed by the construction
of Israeli Industrial Zones on our stolen lands that are located outside
the ghettos defined by the Apartheid Wall, the settlements, and their
road system. This is the key element that provides economic sustainability
to the rest of the Israeli plans. These Israeli-owned industrial zones
will be sites for labor intensive industries where the Palestinian people
will be forced to work as exploited labor, enriching the Israeli economy
in the attempt to earn a meager living in the only way possible behind
the gates of our ghettos. Israel has asked the U.S. and Europe to fund
the CBIZ, and thus to legitimize the Israeli political project, under
the pretext of providing "work opportunities" for the Palestinian
population. The CBIZ is also presented as a practical economic solution
to a potential humanitarian disaster after all, the argument
goes, if the international community does not provide funding for this
project, then the Palestinian population will be dependent on humanitarian
aid (or simply starve to death in their ghettos, which might be upsetting
for the world to watch). This humanitarian aid like many other
costs of the occupation of Palestine and the expulsion of Palestinians
from their land would thus have to be paid by the international
community. In any case, under the CBIZ plan, the Palestinian people
will remain subjected, enslaved, and deprived of any possibility of
self-determination.
The Apartheid Wall allows Israel to implement and link all of these
policies into a coherent regime. It completes the Palestinian ghettos
that have been prepared by the settlement policy and the road system.
It also enables Israel to completely annex Jerusalem and to isolate
it from the West Bank, thus providing Israel with a direct passage from
the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan Valley, while at the same time taking
away the heart of Palestine from the Palestinian people.
In the light of
these facts on the ground, it is obvious that no Palestinian state will
be possible. It is also obvious that the continued violation of Palestinian
rights and of international law remains the infrastructure of the new
Israeli plans. The only future envisaged for the Palestinian people
is one of ghettos and Bantustans, and a life under permanent Israeli
control, domination, and humiliation.
A Palestinian farmer
standing in front of the destruction caused by the Apartheid Wall in
Beit Duqqu asked: "You took our country and killed our children.
You destroyed our houses and bulldozed our fields and built your settlements,
what more do you want? Why the Wall? ... You want to trap us like mice,
you want to put a prison gate for us and start counting us as if we
were some animals?!"
The Palestinian
people will never accept a life lived under these conditions, where
the occupation has been reinforced by the seemingly definitive
colonization of the West Bank. This represents the completion of an
apartheid system that by far exceeds the darkest times of South Africa,
as it aims at the complete demise of our people.
We will never accept
seeing our lands stolen and destroyed, our dignity taken away, our most
fundamental rights violated every day, our holy sites barred in front
of us, and Jerusalem the historic, cultural, and economic capital
of Palestine annexed and isolated from our people. We will not
surrender to this destiny. But we are asking for a response from the
world to this project for our demise that is clear, effective, and immediate.
Six months after
the International Court of Justice decision regarding the illegality
of the Apartheid Wall, the settlement policy, and the Occupation, Israel
has not given any sign that it will stop the construction of the Apartheid
Wall. Rather, it has strengthened its colonial plans. International
criticism has proven unable to bring about the changes that are needed.
The international community has as with all other UN resolutions
regarding Palestinian rights once again failed to take up its
legal obligations to ensure that the ICJ decision will be implemented
and international law respected.
It is the people
of the world who are being called upon today to defend the values of
justice and freedom. The call for the isolation of Israel, through boycott,
divestment, and sanctions campaigns, needs to get louder every day,
in every city around the world. Individuals, organizations, networks,
and institutions are already promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions
campaigns throughout the world. The trend towards a new international
anti-apartheid movement is emerging, and this is the grassroots support
upon which the Palestinian people can build in the face of continued
failures by the international community.
These different
campaigns around the world must be the beginning of a process that will
make Israel pay a price for its crimes. Such a worldwide movement is
necessary in order to end this vicious blend of occupation, expulsion,
ghettoization, which will otherwise lead as the new Israeli plans
reveal when they are examined closely, away from the media show surrounding
the Palestinian election process to the total enslavement of
a whole people.
Jamal Juma' is the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid
Wall Campaign, which represents a number of major Palestinian civil
society organizations and over 60 regional popular committees throughout
Occupied Palestine. For more information, see stopthewall.org.