January 22-28, 2004

slant

The Great Divide

It is easier to build walls than break them down.

by Heather Kalmbach

If one lesson may be drawn from the case of Northern Ireland and applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is the fate of the wall that divides Protestant Belfast from Catholic. Standing at the base of the wall in West Belfast several weeks ago and observing the painful rift that cuts deep across the city, I wondered whether the West Bank security barrier will permanently scar prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace in 2004.

Built in 1969, the West Belfast barrier was erected to quell sectarian violence during the Irish troubles. Like the wall in Northern Ireland, Israel is constructing a network of electric fences and concrete walls around the West Bank to separate Jewish settlers from nearby Palestinian communities and to keep out suicide bombers. Costing $2.5 million a mile, the barrier includes a 10-foot-high electric fence, equipped with surveillance cameras and surrounded by barbed wire, trenches, and a military patrol road.

The wall in West Belfast should be taken as a warning. Dubbed the "peace line," it was built as a temporary security barricade 35 years ago. Today it still stands, dividing the city and ensuring that Belfast remains the most militarized area in western Europe. Will the fence in the West Bank have a similar fate, isolating neighboring Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities for decades to come?

The first phase of the wall, completed in July 2003, snakes approximately 108 miles through the northwestern West Bank. Subsequent phases will be constructed around Israeli settlements and will not follow the Green Line, the post-1948 demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank. In Jerusalem, the wall will cut through a Palestinian neighborhood called Abu Dis, separating families who live just blocks apart. So far, construction of the barrier has carved off 2 percent of the total area of the West Bank, resulting in the confiscation of some 2,850 acres of land.

Opponents call the wall a land grab. Proponents call it self-defense.

And for a short time, it did appear that the wall was effective. For nearly three months, there were no suicide bombings by Palestinian militants and no targeted killings by Israelis. Unfortunately, the calm was broken on Christmas Day when a suicide bomber from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine killed four Israelis at a bus stop near Tel Aviv. Violence continued on Dec. 26 when Israeli soldiers fired on demonstrators outside of the Palestinian village of Mascha, wounding an American woman and an Israeli man protesting the West Bank security barrier. More recently, on Jan. 14, a Palestinian woman from Hamas blew herself up in the Gaza Strip, killing four Israelis.

The wall did not stop this violence.

Nor has it renewed hope for the American-backed road map to peace. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis are meeting obligations listed in part one of the plan. According to the road map, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to crack down on militant factions and Israel is required to halt all settlement activity. But the road map has collapsed and both sides blame each other.

Palestinians point to Israel's plan to erect more than 600 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Moreover, they fear that the wall will annex their land and cut off towns on the Israeli side, restricting their movement and limiting access to jobs. In turn, Israeli officials assert that Yasser Arafat's failure to halt militant attacks has stalled the road map, hence justifying the construction of the security barrier.

On Oct. 21, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel end construction of the wall and remove existing stretches of the fence. A month later, Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared that the West Bank barrier is causing "serious socioeconomic harm" to the Palestinian people.

But, the wall is causing serious harm to both Palestinians and Israelis, embedding a sense of segregation to the east and west of the fence and fragmenting prospects for peace. Walking the streets of Belfast this fall, I was jarred by the way daily life incorporates secular divisions almost effortlessly. People seem to step in and out of the intricate mesh of ethnic boundaries without question. Perhaps few parallels can truly be drawn between Northern Ireland and the Middle East, but it is evident in both parts of the world that ethnic division thrives on a culture of blame. Rather than promoting a culture of responsibility, walls simply divide two peoples. The "peace line" in Belfast, now three-and-a-half-decades old, is still in use, clamping its metal gates shut during times of tension, further dividing Catholic from Protestant.

The barrier of steel in West Belfast should be taken as a warning for Israelis and Palestinians in the new year ahead: clearly, it is much easier to construct a wall than to break it down.

Heather Kalmbach, a Philadelphia native, holds a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Michigan and is currently a National Flagship Language Initiative Arabic Fellow in Cairo, Egypt. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper editor in chief, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.