Walls don’t work, at least not in the long run. And if anyone should know it, it would be the Israelis.
The walls of Jericho did not save the Canaanites against Joshua. The Biblical story of Joshua’s trumpets causing the walls to collapse is obviously not literally true. The walls of Jericho ( now a city in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank), were probably destroyed by earthquake. Nonetheless, the general point about the ineffectiveness of walls remains.
The Great Wall of China did not keep out the Mongol hordes. Billy Connolly speaks (a form) of English – not ancient Gaelic as Emperor Hadrian would have had it under his policy of keeping the barbarian Scots out of Roman-conquered Britain through the construction of the now-ruined Hadrian’s Wall.
In Berlin today you can see the preserved remnants of the reinforced-concrete wall that came tumbling down in 1989.
And yet, in Israel this week voters gave the most seats to the party of the wall – Ehud Olmert’s new Kadima Party. The party was formed by the previous Prime Minister, Aeriel Sharon, with mainly Likud and some Labour MPs. Sharon has since suffered a stroke and will pay no further part in Israeli politics. But he abandoned the old policy of supporting all Jewish settlements in the territories occupied in the 1967 war in the West Bank and Gaza. He unilaterally withdrew from the whole of Gaza.
But Sharon and his successor have never supported total withdrawal from the West Bank. Instead , they will withdraw from about 92 per cent. The 65,000 Jews settled in that part will have to move. Israel will keep 8 per cent, including Arab East Jerusalem. In that 8 per cent – the choicest land — they will consolidate the Jewish settlements of more than 200,000 people.
A huge barrier is being constructed between the remaining Palestinian West Bank on one hand and Israel proper plus the annexed 8 per cent of the West Bank on the other. The barrier is 670 kilometres long. Much of it barbed wire fence on a concrete base that will defeat tunnelling. In more heavily populated areas the barrier takes the form of an eight-metre high reinforced-concrete wall.
It encloses the best land and the best water resources. It is economically ruinous for the Palestinians. It cuts many Palestinians from their farmland. It discourages tourism into Palestinian areas. Indeed, now is the best time to visit Bethlehem. The hordes of American tourists have been frightened off. But the crossing from Jerusalem through the wall is fairly foreboding.
Olmert says he will define the borders of Israel with or without Palestinian agreement and will press ahead with the wall if necessary. He prefers agreement.
What folly is this? He cannot get agreement because the bare minimum Palestinian expectation is withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders before the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And that is the position in international law. The UN Security Council un-revoked resolution 242 demands that. And a World Court ruling has affirmed that all the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal. Even the return of the whole of the West Bank and East Jerusalem would be a major concession by the Palestinians because it would mean an abandonment of the right of return of Palestinians and their descendants who, in 1948, left Israel and whose property has since been taken over.
So Olmert has condemned himself to unilaterally pushing ahead with the wall. But there will be no peace or security behind a wall. The wall is going to be a far bigger stumbling block to peace than the election of a Hamas majority in the recent Palestinian election even though Hamas does not recognise the right of Israel to exist.
Israel has to deal with the fact Hamas represents majority Palestinian opinion. It will not change by building a wall; it will only harden.
And Israel can deal with Hamas, despite its violence and non-recognition of Israel. Ultimately, Britain dealt with the Irish Republican Army, for example. Indeed, that is an instructive example because Britain was the major cause of the present trouble in the Middle East through promising the same land to different people. It promised Palestine to the Arabs for helping in World War I against the Turks and also as a homeland for the the Jews for their help in the war effort in Europe.
After World War II the later became more urgent after the horrors of the Holocaust. But remedying the horrors inflicted upon one people by evicting another people from their land is no solution.
Ultimately the way to deal with terrorism is to deal with the causes of terrorism. Democracy and prosperity are part of the antidote, but it must include a just accord about dispossession of land.
Israel will not defeat terrorism by a unilateral incorporation of parts of the territory conquered in the 1967 war and putting a wall around them. That will only fuel terrorism.
In the past 40 years one of the biggest stumbling blocks to peace was Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. His life was defined in being a resistance leader. Peace would deny him meaning in life and make him accountable as a civilian leader, so he always refused it. He preferred the attention and the corruptly obtained wealth of being leader of a resistance organisation rather than leader of a nation state.
Now Arafat is dead.
Israel may not like it, but it must deal with Hamas. At least Hamas is not corrupt and open to peace if the terms are right, unlike Arafat who would not accept it at any price.
Hamas’s dedication to the destruction of Israel would ultimately fade away after the creation of a Palestinian state with sufficient territory to prosper. Israel cannot expect a renunciation in the short term. And why insist on it. Hamas cannot carry out the threat.
If President George W Bush is really interested in establishing a democratic foothold in the Arab Middle East, he should turn his attention from Iraq and do something about Palestine which just held a free, democratic election and elected Hamas. And they cannot be shut out by a wall.