A Wall as a Weapon By NOAM CHOMSKY

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/23/o...>

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - It is a virtual reflex for
governments to plead security concerns when they
undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext
for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in
order. Israel’s so-called security fence, which is the
subject of hearings starting today at the International
Court of Justice in The Hague, is a case in point.

Few would question Israel’s right to protect its
citizens from terrorist attacks like the one yesterday,
even to build a security wall if that were an
appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall
would be built if security were the guiding concern:
inside Israel, within the internationally recognized
border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49
war. The wall could then be as forbidding as the
authorities chose: patrolled by the army on both sides,
heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize
security, and there would be no international protest
or violation of international law.

This observation is well understood. While Britain
supports America’s opposition to the Hague hearings,
its foreign minister, Jack Straw, has written that the
wall is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who
inspected the "security fence," said it should be on
the Green Line or "indeed on the Israeli side of the
line." A British parliamentary investigative commission
also called for the wall to be built on Israeli land,
condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate"
Israeli "strategy of bringing the population to heel."

What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian
lands. It is also - as the Israeli sociologist Baruch
Kimmerling has described Israel’s war of "politicide"
against the Palestinians - helping turn Palestinian
communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans
of South Africa look like symbols of freedom,
sovereignty and self-determination.

Even before construction of the barrier was under way,
the United Nations estimated that Israeli barriers,
infrastructure projects and settlements had created 50
disconnected Palestinian pockets in the West Bank. As
the design of the wall was coming into view, the World
Bank estimated that it might isolate 250,000 to 300,000
Palestinians, more than 10 percent of the population,
and that it might effectively annex up to 10 percent of
West Bank land. And when the government of Ariel Sharon
finally published its proposed map, it became clear the
the wall would cut the West Bank into 16 isolated
enclaves, confined to just 42 percent of the West Bank
land that Mr. Sharon had previously said could be ceded
to a Palestinian state.

The wall has already claimed some of the most fertile
lands of the West Bank. And, crucially, it extends
Israel’s control of critical water resources, which
Israel and its settlers can appropriate as they choose,
while the indigenous population often lacks water for
drinking.

Palestinians in the seam between the wall and the Green
Line will be permitted to apply for the right to live
in their own homes; Israelis automatically have the
right to use these lands. "Hiding behind security
rationales and the seemingly neutral bureaucratic
language of military orders is the gateway for
expulsion," the Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in
the daily Haaretz. "Drop by drop, unseen, not so many
that it would be noticed internationally and shock
public opinion." The same is true of the regular
killings, terror and daily brutality and humiliation of
the past 35 years of harsh occupation, while land and
resources have been taken for settlers enticed by ample
subsidies.

It also seems likely that Israel will transfer to the
occupied West Bank the 7,500 settlers it said this
month it would remove from the Gaza Strip. These
Israelis now enjoy ample land and fresh water, while
one million Palestinians barely survive, their meager
water supplies virtually unusable. Gaza is a cage, and
as the city of Rafah in the south is systematically
demolished, residents may be blocked from any contact
with Egypt and blockaded from the sea.

It is misleading to call these Israeli policies. They
are American-Israeli policies - made possible by
unremitting United States military, economic and
diplomatic support of Israel. This has been true since
1971 when, with American support, Israel rejected a
full peace offer from Egypt, preferring expansion to
security. In 1976, the United States vetoed a Security
Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement
in accord with an overwhelming international consensus.
The two-state proposal has the support of a majority of
Americans today, and could be enacted immediately if
Washington wanted to do so.

At most, the Hague hearings will end in an advisory
ruling that the wall is illegal. It will change
nothing. Any real chance for a political settlement -
and for decent lives for the people of the region -
depends on the United States.

Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of
"Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global
Dominance."