Palestinian Wall Art along the Israel/ West Bank Security Barrier

[Ellen Pham]

The Israeli West-Bank barrier is an 8 meters high concrete wall being constructed by Israel, mainly within the West Bank (Palestine). Most Israelis agree that the wall has improved their security; where the wall has been completed, there has been a drastic reduction in suicide bombings.

For Palestinians, the wall has meant even greater suffering and poverty, limiting their freedom and access to jobs, land, water, relatives and medical care. For example, in the West Bank, average time for an ambulance to travel to the nearest hospital has increased from 10 minutes to over 110 minutes. In some parts of the West Bank, a 10 minute walk to a job or farm land has become a 3-hour drive in order to reach a gate, to go (if allowed) through a crowded military checkpoint, and drive back to the destination on the other side. Palestinians refer to it as the Apartheid wall, and equate living behind it to living in one big prison.

I hope someday there will be more humane solutions, where the rights and basic needs of the Palestinians are held in equal consideration with the security needs of the Israelis.

Much like the Berlin Wall before it, the West Bank side of the wall is being covered with graffiti art.

The images in the first slideshow are large, at least 1800 X 1200 pixels. You can click through (click twice on image) to view at the large size.



This second slide show consists of medium sized images, about 800 X 600.

[Ellen Pham]

I know you wish the Palestinian people could move freely too, Or-Tal. I know you harbor no ill will towards Palestinian civilians who just want to live a peaceful and decent life. I have to look up my facts again (I actually have NO mind for these kind of facts), but some of the wall has been built on land that is inside "the green line". Oh, I'll just go back and look it up. From wikipedia:

The barrier generally runs along or near the 1949 Jordanian-Israeli armistice/Green Line, but diverges in many places to include on the Israeli side several of the highly populated areas of Jewish settlements in the West Bank such as East Jerusalem, Ariel, Gush Etzion, Emmanuel, Karnei Shomron, Givat Ze'ev, Oranit, and Maale Adumim.[18] Because of the complex path it follows, most of the barrier is actually set in the West Bank.[2] It diverges from the "Green Line" by anywhere from 200 meters to as much as 20 kilometers, with the result that many Israeli settlements in the West Bank remain on the Israeli side of the barrier, and some Palestinian towns are nearly encircled by it. Approximately 20% is actually on the Green Line.[19] The proponents of the barrier claim that its route is not set in stone, as it was challenged in court and changed several times. They note that the cease-fire line of 1949 was negotiated "without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines" (Art. VI.9).[20] Security experts argue that the topography does not permit putting the barrier along the Green Line in some places, because hills or tall buildings on the Palestinian side would make the barrier ineffective against terrorism.[21] The International Court of Justice has countered that in such cases it is only legal to build the barrier inside Israel.

As far as the statement, there has never been a state called Palestine, I'll quote from wikipedia again:

Palestine is a name which has been widely used since Roman times to refer to the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.[1] In its broader meaning as a geographical term, Palestine can refer to an area that includes contemporary Israel and the Palestinian territories, parts of Jordan, and parts of Lebanon and Syria.[1][2] In its narrow meaning, it refers to the area within the boundaries of the former British Mandate of Palestine (1920-1948) west of the Jordan River.

Palestine can also refer to the State of Palestine, declared by the Palestinian National Authority and recognized by over 100 countries.[3] Within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the use of the term Palestine can arouse fierce controversy.[4]

When you say there was never any Palestine, I think you need to acknowledge that part of the land that became the state of Israel was forcibly taken from the Palestinian familes who were living on it and owned it, just like we own our property and houses now. It's a ridiculous thought, but if the Canadian army came down and forced me at gunpoint out of my home, then a year later gave my house to a nice Canadian family that didn't mean me any particular harm, I would still insist they give it back. Just because it happened 60 years ago doesn't mean it didn't happen. And those people have been waiting for reparations ever since- they have no other home. The double tragedy is that those Jewish families also have no other home to go to, and when they came into possession of the house/land, they had just been through one of the worst, if not the worst, persecutions in history.

Have you read The Lemon Tree? It is such a good book, and presents this dilemma very humanely. An Israeli wpmen meets the Palestinian man whose home was forcibly taken from his family in 1948 or 49. The home was given to her family by the Israeli government, and they were told the previous owners had "just run away". Well, common sense says that no one just runs away from their home for no reason, but they had just lived through the persecution in Europe, and they didn't question it. Anyway, the man and the woman become friends, but at the end of the book, there is still no solution. The book was written from a series of interviews an American journalist recorded with them both.

Anyway, I think that is the moral crux of the matter. And one that has been repeated over and over again throughout history, but that doesn't make it right. Who cares what I think, but : ).... I think it is impractical to actually give back the land that was taken, but some kind of fair reparations have to be made for peace and justice to reign in the region. Bombs and shellings are never going to do it, unless it gets to the point where the Palestinian population has been decimated, like the American Indian population was. And that's the direction I fear it is going... that is the only way peace will come through military means, and really, that is not peace, it is complete domination.

So, when you say that peace can only happen once once all of them will accept the existence and sustainability of the state of Israel, and you don't add anything else to that statement, it seems like you are saying peace can only happen when the Palestinians accept that the Israelis took their land and their homes from them, and to stop asking for justice.

Going back to the "status quo" for the Palestinian refugees will never be good enough; their status quo is awful. It's not all propaganda, Or-Tal. Read this excerpt from a report by Save the Children (I'll attach the entire document):

Food and Nutrition
Even before the latest outbreak of violence, 50,000 Gazan children were malnourished; more than two-thirds of all children suffered from vitamin A deficiency and almost half of children under age 2 were anemic. Lack of access to food, clean water and medical supplies exacerbates threats to children’s health and well-being. Currently, not enough food is entering via Kerem Shalom crossing. Distribution of food that does enter is limited due to security concerns.
•
Approximately 90 percent of Gaza’s population – some 1,275,300 people including 714,168 children – currently depend on food assistance. (OCHA)
•
A child in Gaza is five times more likely to be stunted than in a healthy population. (UNICEF)
•
The risks of infection or malnutrition from using breast milk substitutes prepared with contaminated water are high, yet three-quarters of Gaza’s infants under 6 months of age — around 30,000 babies — are not exclusively breastfed. (UNICEF)
•
Only 50 percent of the World Food Program’s (WFP) warehouse capacity is being used (3,700 metric tons). An additional 4,000 metric tons of food (150 trucks) is needed to ensure adequate food supplies for WFP distribution in the coming period. (OCHA)

The Gazans in the refugee camps don't have adequate food . And this was before the Israeli strikes. And now their infrastructure has been demolished. The status quo is awful.

Anyway, what to do... I'm guessing neither of us knows. At least we are talking about it, most people won't.

Children of the Gaza Crisis.pdf

[Or-Tal Kiriati]

The wall is an ugly scar in the middle of the state of Israel.
It is a reminder of the extremists that will not let the Israeli live peacefully, even at the high cost it causes their own people, the Palestinian civilians.
I wish there was no need of this wall. I wish we could travel across countries here like they do in Europe. Vacation in Beirut in the summer, tour Damascus in the fall, have guests from Jordan and Iraq at Tel-Aviv and build sky scrapers together in Gaza.

I am looking forward to the day even the extremists will agree to let Israel and the Israelis live, and stop all violence. I will be carrying my own hammer to break this wall.

It is not inside Palestine, by the way, as there are no agreements, so far, that determine which lands will belong to the desired state of Palestine and which lands will remain a part of Israel. Just to remind you - there have never been a state called Palestine. Even before Israel was established - there wasn't a Palestine. Even before Jerusalem was united, these parts of land, that you refer to as Palestine, were not Palestine, but rather it was a part of another state, Jordan. I share the Palestinian desire for their own land, as they are a nationality and they must have their home. But that can only happen once all of them will accept the existence and sustainability of the state of Israel.