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The Wall in
Palestine: Facts, Testimonies, Analysis and Call to Action
Edited by The Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON)
Jerusalem, 2003, 199 pages.
To date, some 300,000 people are currently affected by the
land confiscation, tree uprooting and inaccessibility to lands
and water due to the caging off of their communities,
throughout the northern West Bank, Jerusalem and Bethlehem,
with concrete walls and electric fences. This book is critical
in surfacing what the Wall is, its shocking impacts, and its
re-shaping of the entire West Bank.
The pictures themselves, some one hundred of them, can tell
the whole story. The book is an impressionable cross between a
detailed report, a photo journal, activist resource guide, and
an anthology. Contributors to the publication include the
PENGON member organizations and the Wall Campaign Emergency
Centers. Nine guest articles covering a range of topics and
angles give further depth to this massive construct, while
highlighting the point that is consistent throughout the
report and testimonies: in whatever which way, the Wall is
meant to control, destroy, and oppress.
The book provides an overview of the Wall, while focusing on
the Wall’s “first phase” which is nearing completion in the
northern West Bank districts of Qalqiliya, Tulkarem, and Jenin
and which represents only 1/6 of the projected completed Wall.
The book dedicates a section to farmers and individuals from
the affected communities who tell their stories, highlighting
the countless violations. A comprehensive section on the Wall
in international humanitarian and human rights law provides an
important gateway into the illegality of this offensive.
Amidst the current focus around the Road Map, the existence
and continued building of the Wall (with over 200 bulldozers
working on a daily basis) stresses the actual road that is
being forcibly paved for Palestinians. Canton, enclave,
ghetto, or Bantustan; are all terms used by PENGON to describe
the current reality and future prospects. It is frightfully
clear after reading this book and the facts and numbers it
contains, and looking at the projected maps, that the future
continues to look grim.
The book is perhaps the best resource currently available on
the Wall. But more so, the layout and the section about the
Apartheid Wall Campaign, an NGO and grassroots coordinated
effort lead by PENGON, demands us to acknowledge that the book
be used as a tool in advocacy. Wall or fence, the results are
the same. If the Wall is completed it will cross and besiege
every West Bank district.
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