November
9 has been the global Day of Action against Israel’s Apartheid Wall for years,(chosen because it is the day the Berlin Wall fell). Now, 15 years after Israel started to build the apartheid Wall, there are three times as many walls around the world enforcing territorial state control and visible and invisible walls in our societies are increasing and growing.
It’s time to unite for a World without Walls!
We will unite in mobilisation to:
* Raise awareness about the devastating effect of the increasing dominance of walls in our world and our lives;
* Create solidarity and links among the people affected by the walls and movements fighting the walls;
* Demand an immediate end to the walls that expel, exclude, oppress, discriminate and exploit;
* Resist and defund those that profit from the walls.
Join the GLOBAL CALL FOR ACTION for the 9th of November as a Day of Action for a #WorldwithoutWalls
Walls have not only risen to fortify borders of state control but demarcate the boundaries between the rich, the powerful, the socially acceptable and the ‘other’. They increasingly dominate our cities and societies. Tens of thousands linger as prisoners of conscience or under illegal and inhumane conditions behind prison walls. Visible and invisible walls […] aim to bar us from attaining economic, political, social and environmental justice. […] As people affected by these walls and as movements that pose justice, freedom and equality as our tools to resolve the problems of this planet, we join the call for the 9th of November as a Global Day of Action for a Worldwithout Walls.”
More information here
Israel’s Apartheid Wall
In June 2002, the Israeli government started building the apartheid separation wall, a 700 kilometre long barrier or ‘Partition Wall’ in the West Bank of Occupied Palestine, ostensibly to protect their citizens from suicide attacks.
88 percent of the Wall has been built on private Palestinian lands. The Wall creates a physical divide not only along the pre-1967 Green Line, but right into the Occupied West Bank taking valuable land and water resources and cutting off Palestinian towns and villages from the rest of the West Bank, at times dividing the same town into two parts.
Although the northern part of the barrier follows the “Green Line” pretty closely, much of the rest of its route involves great loops eastward into Palestinian territory in order to incorporate illegal Israeli settlements and take land and valuable water aquifers.
Much of the barrier is barbed wire fence, within a 60-100meter zone of military tracks and ditches, but some of the most notorious parts are made up of 8-meter-high concrete walls.
According to Israeli NGO B’Tselem, the major aim in planning the route was the de facto annexation of part of the West Bank and when the Barrier is completed, 9.5 percent of the West Bank, containing 60 settlements, will be located on its western, “Israeli” side.
The wall has become extremely controversial and many countries and NGOs have spoken against it. Even the naming of the barrier/wall has become very controversial; proponents of it usually identify it as a security barrier or security fence, while opponents tend to call it an apartheid wall.
Palestinians have maintained ongoing protests against this wall in villages throughout the Occupied West Bank despite harsh responses from Israeli occupation forces. International human rights and humanitarian law recognize and codify a number of international standards applicable to Palestinians involved in protests against the wall, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, the right to life, humane treatment and freedom from discrimination, and protection as human rights defenders.
The International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion in July 2004 is that ‘The wall, along the route chosen, and its associated régime, gravely infringes a number of rights of Palestinians residing in the territory occupied by Israel. The Court accordingly finds that the construction of the wall, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law’.
This ruling supports Palestinian and international calls for the dismantling of Israel’s wall on the grounds that it violates international law and breaches human rights.
CJPP supports the campaign to dismantle the apartheid Israeli wall and also demands an immediate end to the walls that expel, exclude, oppress, discriminate and exploit.
Nahed Odeh, CJPP, (Nov 2017)