By Meredith Lee-Clark
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
QALANDIYA, West Bank – Palestinian and foreign activists broke through the wall separating Israel and the West Bank, harkening back to the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago.
The group used a large truck to pull down a two-meter by six-meter section of the wall near the West Bank town of Qalandiya, near Ramallah. The crowd of fifty cheered as the section toppled, waived a Palestinian flag and burning tires on the Israeli side. Israeli police responded by firing tear gas into the crowd, and some Palestinians threw rocks at the police.
The separation barrier has been a hotly contested issue between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Israelis claim the wall is necessary for national security, arguing it has effectively halted suicide bombers from coming into Israel. Palestinians, however, view the wall as a land grab; claiming that Israeli is effectively undermining any future of a functioning Palestinian state.
Israel began construction of the wall in 2000. The wall’s path does not hold to pre-1967 borders, but rather cuts into areas traditionally within the West Bank. Throughout the newly-formed border, the wall cuts through Palestinian towns and carves through Palestinian farmland to bring vital water resources under Israeli control. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that the wall was illegal, and that it should be taken down because it crossed into occupied territory.
Aside from the breach in Qalandiya, there were other protests throughout the West Bank leading up to the Berlin Wall anniversary. Protestors in Bethlehem marked four years of their weekly march against the wall, as six villages in the metropolitan area are cut off from reasonable access to the city. The West Bank city of Na’alin also hosts a weekly march, and on November 6, masked protestors used a hydraulic car-jack to hoist another section of the wall out of place. The wall is constructed in the same inverted T-shape as was the Berlin Wall.
“Today we commemorate twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” said Abdullah Abu Rahma, the leader of the People’s Campaign to Fight the Wall. “This is the first step in a series of activities we will be holding in the coming days to express our firm attachment to our land and our rejection of this wall.”
For more information, please see:
Al Jazeera – Palestinians Break Israel’s Wall – 9 November 2009
Ha’aretz – Palestinians Breach Separation Fence for Second Time in a Week – 9 November 2009
Huffington Post – Mr. Netanyahu, Tear Down This Wall – 9 November 2009
VOA News – W. Bank Palestinians Tear Down Segment of Barrier Wall – 9 November 2009
Palestinian News Network – Four Years of Demonstrating Against the Wall in Southern Bethlehem – 24 October 2009
