Lately, it has been rather easy for me to sympathize with
the Palestinian perspective of the wall.
After seeing both Israelis and Palestinians (such as the co-founders of
the East-West Divan Orchestra) push for a stop to the settlements, interviewing
a young adult involved in peaceful activism, reading about self-expression
through graffiti, and watching the powerful film 5 Broken Cameras, this isn’t so hard to understand.
What I would
like to know at this point is the other perspective. Why was something as extreme as the wall implemented in the
first place? Why did the Israeli
government feel so threatened? I
think back to our first speaker, Dr. Herrmann, zooming out on the map to show
us how Israel sees themselves and the world around them: a tiny Jewish state in
a sea of majority Arab Muslim nations.
This article was written in 2011 for the LA Times by Dore
Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the UN. It describes the security needs of the state of Israel,
explaining that the 1967 boundaries were not sufficient to truly safeguard the
nation. A wall would show the true
desired boundaries for the state, as well as make a statement to the world that
Israel is powerful.
My second source comes from my browser homepage:
nbcnews.com. This is much more
recent- posted two days ago. In
the city of Bait Jala, in the West Bank, Christians and Muslims gather together
for a weekly mass in the valley where the barrier is to be built. Here we see a coming together of
faiths, as well as a desperate plea for divine intervention as hope is running
out for this community.
The article also mentions the Israeli explanations for the
wall’s continued construction. Their
biggest argument is that the wall safeguards Israeli citizens from Palestinian
terror attacks.
Found a good article explaining the 'why' for the initial idea of the wall. It was sprung from the public pressure on the government to implement a defense strategy after the onset of suicide attacks in 2002.
ReplyDeletehttp://972mag.com/the-wall-10-years-on-the-great-israeli-project/40683/
It is interesting how often we see "walls" backfiring. Some achieve their purpose and some don't but they almost always end up doing more bad than good. In the end, we tear them down. Yet, as soon as we tear one wall down, another builds up. The only wall I can think of that still exists today is the Great Wall of China. It is not functional, of course, and is merely aesthetically pleasing but we have all heard the horror stories. The men who were worked to death and then their bodies just thrown into the wall to be used. I can't say whether the second part is true or not but I'm sure there were no unions! Anyway, I found the perspectives to be interesting in any case.
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