Tear down Israel's wall, By John Dugard

Opinion, August 2003, www.aljazeerah.info

Tear down Israel's wall

02/08/2003

By John Dugard**

An illegal annexation

GENEVA The recent visits of Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon to the White House have confirmed that the wall or fence being built to separate Israel and Palestine is fast becoming the principal obstacle in the way of peace in the Middle East. Although this structure is now a familiar sight on our television screens, its full implications are little understood, largely as a result of the language used to discuss the subject. . In politics, euphemism is often preferred to accuracy. So it is with the Wall or Fence (which I shall hereinafter call the Wall). Israel terms it the Security Fence or Seam Zone, while in Palestine it is generally known as the Separation Wall or Apartheid Wall - a historically inaccurate metaphor as no wall of this kind was erected between black and white in apartheid South Africa. . The word annexation is avoided as it is too accurate a term. What we are presently witnessing in the West Bank is a visible and clear act of territorial annexation under the guise of security. . The wall between Israel and the West Bank will, when completed, stretch for 450 kilometers (280 miles) and possibly 650 kilometers. At times, it takes the form of an 8-meter-high (26-foot) wall, with wide buffer zones. Mostly it takes the form of a barrier 60 to 100 meters wide, which includes buffer zones, trenches and barbed wire, trace paths to register footprints, an electric fence with sensors, a two-lane patrol road and guard towers at regular intervals. . The wall does not follow the Green Line, the 1967 boundary between Israel and Palestine that is generally accepted as the border between these two entities. Instead, it follows a route that incorporates substantial parts of Palestine into Israel. . At present, in places, the wall intrudes 6 to 7 kilometers into Palestinian territory but there are proposals to delve still deeper to include the settlement of Ariel. In some places the winding route creates a barrier that separates Palestinian villages from the West Bank and converts them into isolated enclaves. Palestinians between the wall and the Green Line will effectively be cut off from their farmland and workplaces, schools and health clinics. . B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, estimates that the wall will cause direct harm to at least 210,000 Palestinians living in 67 villages and towns. There are serious fears that Palestinians caught between the wall and the Green Line will find life so intolerable that they will move to what remains of the West Bank on the eastern side of the wall, thereby creating a new generation of refugees. . It is widely expected that, following the completion of the wall separating Israel from the West Bank on the western side, an eastern wall will be constructed separating Palestine from the Jordan Valley. The illegal settlements in the West Bank will be the principal beneficiaries of the wall. It is estimated that ultimately half of the settler population of 400,000 will be incorporated on the Israeli side of the wall. . The wall is being built at great cost to the Israeli taxpayer. Like the settlements it seeks to protect, it is manifestly intended to create facts on the ground. It may lack an act of annexation, as occurred in the case of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But its effect is the same. Annexation of this kind goes by another name in international law - conquest. . Conquest, or the acquisition of territory by the use of force, has been outlawed by the prohibition on the use of force contained in the UN Charter. This prohibition is confirmed by UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the Oslo accords, which provide that the status of the West Bank and Gaza shall not be changed pending the outcome of permanent status negotiations. The Fourth Geneva Convention likewise prohibits the annexation of occupied territory. . The time has come to condemn the wall as an act of unlawful annexation in the language of Security Council Resolutions 478 and 497, which declare that Israel's actions aimed at the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are "null and void" and should not be recognized by states. Israel's claim that the wall is designed as a security measure with no ulterior motive is simply not supported by the facts.

*Published by International Herald Tribune on August 2, 2003 **The writer, a South African, is a professor of international law at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. He is special rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).