P.O.Box 46081, London W9 2ZF jfjfp@jfjfp.org
Page last updated
March 11, 2007
Understanding the conflict
The Separation Wall
This web page is in three sections:
1. Links and basic info
2. Demos and protests
3. Articles
Links and basic info
a) For up-to-date news and activities see the STOP THE WALL website.
b) For other basic background information on the wall see: Gush Shalom's impressive interactive presentation on the Separation Wall and the excellent Powerpoint presentation by B'Tselem and Bimkom entitled Under the Guise of Security: Routing the Separation Barrier to Enable Israeli Settlement Expansion.
c) For Palestinian responses see the Apartheid Wall campaign run by the Palestianian Environmental NGOs Network
d) For a magnificent compilation of analyses, documents, statistics, maps and photos see The Wall Defeats the Roadmap: A Guide to the Wall, compiled by The Boston Working Group on the Wall, August 2003
e) Behind The Barrier: Human Rights Violations As a Result of Israel's Separation BarrierB'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories April 2003
Summary document and full report available.
The summary concludes by urging the Israeli government to:
* Nullify the government's decisions regarding the separation barrier and immediately stop all work on the barrier, including the taking of land;
* If it is decided that there is no choice other than building the barrier, the government must set the route, as a rule, along the Green Line or, alternatively, within Israel.f) The apartheid wall
Gush Shalom map showing the substantial area of the West bank - 10-15% - being de facto annexed by Israel.g) Glenn Bowman's Powerpoint presentation of the effects of the Wall on the Muslim Christian town of Beit Sahour during 2003.
h) BBC on the International Court of Justice West Bank barrier ruling: Key points
nick watson, zneta) Report and photographs from demonstrations at Az Zawiya which is one of the villages which will be enclosed completely by the wall, along with Rafat and Deir Ballut. These villages are at the north of the Salfeet region where the second phase of the wall is starting.
b) Photo Galleries of the Wall from Israeli photographer Eyal Ofer The focus of the work is to show the story of the people who have to cope with the barrier in their daily life. They show the reality along the fence/wall as it was documented since the construction stage until now.
d) Report from the International Court of Justice by Dan Judelson who went to meet the Palestinian and European activists in the Hague 21-24th February on behalf of JfJfP and European Jews for a Just Peace.
e) Presentation prepared by a pro-Israeli government group on the Wall and annotated by JfJfP
f) Protest against the threatened demolition of the Hope Flowers Peace School canteen to make way for the Wall.
g) EJJP - Executive Committee Statement on the International Court of Justice and the Wall 16th February 2004
h) In pictures: Israel's security barrier BBC News on-line, 1 October 2003
6. About a Wall
Glenn Bowman
Social Analysis 48:1 spring 2004
'Like the United States...Israel has, with its victories over the antagonisms against which it established itself, become unrestrained in its will to sovereign power both within and beyond its borders.'
5. Barbed-wire Screen, Smoke Screen
B. Michael
Yediot Ahronot, 31 October 2003
c. 2,100 words
An astonishing indictment by the reputed Friday columnist in Yedioth Aharonot, Israel's most widely read evening paper. Translated by Tal Haran.
'A lot of "separating" can be achieved with 3,000 km (2,000 miles) of barbed-wire: separating livestock from its owners, olives from their harvesters, vines from their pickers, a doctor from his patients, a worker from his place of work, a teacher from his students. Especially the farmer from his land. One kind of separation will not be obtained by the thousands of barbed kilometers: Separating the suicide-bomber from his victims.'
4. Israel's concrete plan to choke Bethlehem
Gerald Kaufman
The Times, October 14, 2003
'I find it impossible to understand how Jews, who have been persecuted for millennia, can oppress another people in this way.'
For an account of how Kaufman, as a long-time supporter, fell out of love with Israel see The End of an Affair
Ran HaCohen, 21 May 2003
c. 1,700 words
The Apartheid Wall will be 8m high and probably 1.000km long. For comparison, China's Great Wall - the only human-made object seen from outer space - is 6.700km long, whereas the Berlin Wall was a dwarf, just 155km long and 3,6m high. Keeping silent on this gigantic project and its genocidal implications, meant to prevent any fair future settlement (not to mention the Road Map), is a moral crime, of which almost the entire Western media is guilty.
2. On Israel's separation fence (part 1); (part 2)Meron Rappaport
Yedioth Ahronoth, 31 May 2003
c. 6,000 words
You have to be almost insane to think that somebody uprooted mountains, leveled hills and poured billions here in order to build some temporary security barrier "until the permanent borders are decided."... The moment the work began on the fence last August, everyone understood that this was to be the new border, and those who don't board the train now, would miss it... For the fence to be effective, they say, it has to be as short and as straight as possible. What is happening is exactly the opposite.
1. Israel's Apartheid Wall: we are here and they are there
LAW, The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights & the Environment
c. 10,500 words'LAW has consistently argued that Israel's so-called "security wall" is in fact an apartheid wall. The wall will restrict Palestinian freedom of movement, Palestinian livelihoods and Palestinian access to land - a wall which divides upon ethnic, national and religious identity.'
