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GENEVA The recent visits
of Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon to the White House have confirmed
that the wall or fence being built to separate Israel and Palestine
is fast becoming the principal obstacle in the way of peace in the
Middle East. Although this structure is now a familiar sight on our
television screens, its full implications are little understood,
largely as a result of the language used to discuss the subject.
In politics, euphemism is often preferred to accuracy. So it is with
the Wall or Fence (which I shall hereinafter call the Wall). Israel
terms it the Security Fence or Seam Zone, while in Palestine it is
generally known as the Separation Wall or Apartheid Wall - a
historically inaccurate metaphor as no wall of this kind was erected
between black and white in apartheid South Africa.
The word annexation is avoided as it is too accurate a term. What we
are presently witnessing in the West Bank is a visible and clear act
of territorial annexation under the guise of security.
The wall between Israel and the West Bank will, when completed,
stretch for 450 kilometers (280 miles) and possibly 650 kilometers.
At times, it takes the form of an 8-meter-high (26-foot) wall, with
wide buffer zones. Mostly it takes the form of a barrier 60 to 100
meters wide, which includes buffer zones, trenches and barbed wire,
trace paths to register footprints, an electric fence with sensors,
a two-lane patrol road and guard towers at regular intervals.
The wall does not follow the Green Line, the 1967 boundary between
Israel and Palestine that is generally accepted as the border
between these two entities. Instead, it follows a route that
incorporates substantial parts of Palestine into Israel.
At present, in places, the wall intrudes 6 to 7 kilometers into
Palestinian territory but there are proposals to delve still deeper
to include the settlement of Ariel. In some places the winding route
creates a barrier that separates Palestinian villages from the West
Bank and converts them into isolated enclaves. Palestinians between
the wall and the Green Line will effectively be cut off from their
farmland and workplaces, schools and health clinics.
B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, estimates that the
wall will cause direct harm to at least 210,000 Palestinians living
in 67 villages and towns. There are serious fears that Palestinians
caught between the wall and the Green Line will find life so
intolerable that they will move to what remains of the West Bank on
the eastern side of the wall, thereby creating a new generation of
refugees.
It is widely expected that, following the completion of the wall
separating Israel from the West Bank on the western side, an eastern
wall will be constructed separating Palestine from the Jordan
Valley. The illegal settlements in the West Bank will be the
principal beneficiaries of the wall. It is estimated that ultimately
half of the settler population of 400,000 will be incorporated on
the Israeli side of the wall.
The wall is being built at great cost to the Israeli taxpayer. Like
the settlements it seeks to protect, it is manifestly intended to
create facts on the ground. It may lack an act of annexation, as
occurred in the case of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But
its effect is the same. Annexation of this kind goes by another name
in international law - conquest.
Conquest, or the acquisition of territory by the use of force, has
been outlawed by the prohibition on the use of force contained in
the UN Charter. This prohibition is confirmed by UN Security Council
Resolution 242 and the Oslo accords, which provide that the status
of the West Bank and Gaza shall not be changed pending the outcome
of permanent status negotiations. The Fourth Geneva Convention
likewise prohibits the annexation of occupied territory.
The time has come to
condemn the wall as an act of unlawful annexation in the language of
Security Council Resolutions 478 and 497, which declare that
Israel's actions aimed at the annexation of East Jerusalem and the
Golan Heights are "null and void" and should not be recognized by
states. Israel's claim that the wall is designed as a security
measure with no ulterior motive is simply not supported by the
facts.
The writer, a South
African,is a professor of international law at the University of
Leiden, Netherlands. He is special rapporteur of the UN Commission
on Human Rights on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
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