America is complicit in illegal wall...
WHEN THE International Court of Justice at The Hague meets on Monday about Israel's "security fence" in the West Bank, it should find that the wall constitutes a violation of both fundamental human rights and international law.
The fundamental issue lies between "military necessity" and "proportionality." Israel certainly has an obligation to protect its citizens from violent attacks, but it also has a responsibility to protect the safety, well-being, and rights of the Palestinian civilian population under its control. The wall's route, extending deep into Palestinian territory, has the look of a political border, not a security barrier.
Rather than a linear defensive barrier bordering the West Bank, the wall is a complex matrix that literally imprisons thousands of Palestinians in enclaves encircled by 24-foot high walls, electronic fences, and watchtowers manned by armed Israeli soldiers.
In a brief presented to the International Court, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel argues that the wall's route and its other mechanisms of control are not necessary, proportionate, or legitimate security measures.
As a result, the wall violates the basic provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention, a key component of international law which protects civilians living under occupation. It divides families, destroys communities, obstructs people's freedom of movement, and, ultimately, drives them out. It violates prohibitions on confiscating private property in occupied territories. By alienating farmers from their land, it prevents them from earning a livelihood.
Overall, it violates Israel's legal obligations to ensure the well-being of the civilian population under its control, including its right to liberty, security of person, mental and physical health, and freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. As such the wall constitutes a form of collective punishment levied against innocent civilians. The wall also violates political provisions of international law which forbid the acquisition of territory by force and thus prohibit an occupying power from making its occupation permanent.
The route of the wall illegally protects and annexes already illegal settlements. By impinging on Palestinian territory it violates their right to self-determination. Indeed, it violates the international prohibition of apartheid as an aggravated form of racial discrimination. But complicity in violations of human rights is not confined only to Israel. The United States, Israel's chief ally, is culpable as well -- and by extension so are citizens of the United States.
The US government sells massive quantities of sophisticated arms to Israel, a major violator of human rights according to the State Department, even though US law prohibits sales to countries designated as such. American arms intended to be used against armies -- F-16s,
Israel's wall poses a threat and a challenge to all of us. Human rights and international law, formulated largely against the backdrop of the Holocaust, affirm that suffering and oppression can no longer be considered "internal affairs" of particular countries.
We are all responsible for what happens everywhere. What made the Berlin Wall so significant for us all? What motivated President Kennedy to declare: "We are all Berliners"?
It was the idea that there are certain fundamental rights, certain fundamental conditions of life that, if violated, compromise the very essence of human existence. To the degree that the international community accepts responsibility for the well-being of people everywhere, you as a part of civil society have a responsibility to oppose the wall. To the degree that our tax dollars enable Israeli occupation and violations of human rights such as those represented by the wall, we bear a direct responsibility. If Kennedy were alive, today, he might travel to the besieged, walled-in city of Qalqiliya to pronounce: "We are all Palestinians."
Jeff Halper is coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
