UN-Truth

Roger Waters (Pink Floyd, The Wall) has visited The Wall here — Israel’s “security barrier” — a couple of times.

He narrates a film just released (thanks to Angela for this information) by The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in Jerusalem, and he begins by saying:  “The reason for walls is always fear”…

Part One:

UN/OCHA says, in a note on Youtube explaining the film, that it “explores how Palestinians in urban and rural areas have been impacted by the Walls construction since the International Court of Justices Advisory Opinion in 2004, which declared the Wall’s route in the West Bank illegal. Several senior Israeli security officials are interviewed in the film, two of whom were directly responsible for planning the Wall route and who explain the Israeli position for constructing it. The film was made by the United Nations Jerusalem”.

Part One includes some archival footage of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announcing in August 2002 that “We have decided to erect buffer zones to achieve a security separation.  we have decided to start immediately to mark buffer zones and erecting obstacles along them”.

The narration that Waters reads (it was undoubtedly written and cleared by the UN says, about The Wall: “It does not follow the Green Line … but intrudes deep into the West Bank … It disrupts the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, as well as slicing off about ten percent of the West Bank … Tens of thousands of olive trees lay in the path of the bulldozers. For Palestinians the olive tree is a symbol of connectedness to their land. The Israeli authorities pledged to replant the uprooted trees, but many were cut down and disappeared [these phrases were clearly written by a careful UN bureaucrat]” …

Yes, it’s true, says General Amos Elon, identified as former Israeli Defense Ministry Head of the Security Fence Project): “we were on a very tight schedule” and “we had to solve the security problem as soon as possible”.

Of course, The Wall is not finished yet — maybe it will take another two years, if it is ever finished. [The film says only 58 percent is constructed so far -- and that has cost some $2 billion dollars...)

Therefore, any determined suicide bomber could probably still get through to Israel without too much trouble.

Hanan Ashrawi says: "The Wall is not built on the '67 lines. The Wall is built on Palestinian land, and it is a Wall for annexation and isolation ... It has generated greater hostility, and when Israel claims to feel safer behind The Wall, they don't understand that there was a decision for a cease-fire, there was a decision for the cessation of suicide bombing, and it was a result of political considerations, not because of the Wall itself". [Is this confirmation that there was a prior decision in favor of suicide bombing?]

Shaul Arieli agrees that The Wall (he calls it “the fence”) does not have anything to do with the end of suicide bombings — but he says that’s because the Israeli military is catching potential bombers deep within the West Bank itself.

There is a good vignette of Israeli soldiers inspecting Palestinian families who have permits to enter through a closed gate to work their lands.

The film says that new UN research shows that only 20 percent of those in the northern West Bank who used to work their land which is now cut off by The Wall are getting permits — “Land becomes abandoned for lack of access”, Waters says.

The film also says that over 80 percent of The Wall goes through the West Bank (i.e., is not on the “Green Line” or armistice line that served as a boundary from the time the UN negotiated agreements with four neighboring Arab countries to end the fighting that surrounded the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 until the June 1967 war when Israel captured the West Bank (and more).

It suggests that this is the main reason for the July 2004 Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice that termed The Wall — and its associated regime — illegal.

Part Two (there is a problem with the volume):

The film says that the 2004 ICJ Advisory Opinion called for a freeze of any new construction, and for the dismantlement of those parts of The Wall that are inside the West Bank…

Filed under: Boundaries & Borders, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, Israel, Palestine & Palestinians, Register of damages due to The Wall