APARTHEID WALL, MONTH AGAINST THE (2004)
Categories: Civil Rights, Anniversary, Legal, Military& Politics
Location: Worldwide
Type of Event: Monthly Event
Updated: June 03, 2024
Location: Worldwide
Type of Event: Monthly Event
Updated: June 03, 2024
About the Month Against the Apartheid Wall
On July 9, 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion entitled Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which declared the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank illegal under international law. The Court was clear: it demanded the Wall to be torn down, sanctioned once again Palestinian rights and called upon the international community to enforce Israeli compliance.
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Apartheid is a word associated with South Africa in the years prior to 1992. However, the definition fits the parameters of Israeli law and conduct.
DEFINITION OF APARTHEID:
1. An official policy of racial segregation involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against one group of people by another due to their race, origin, faith or other determining factor.
2. A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.
3. The condition of being separated from others; segregation.
__________
The wall was first proposed in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War by Ariel Sharon (whom ironically pretended to be against it in 2002) as a means for creating specific facts on the ground that would compliment the annexation of land via the settlement projects instituted at the conclusion of the 6-Day war in 1967. The actual planning of the wall began in 1978, nine years BEFORE the first Intifada (uprising) and fifteen years BEFORE the first suicide bomb. The wall was not planned for security. It was planned for annexation and disenfranchisement from the beginning as a means to create facts on the ground making it impossible for a contiguous state for non-Jewish people in the Holy Land. The first mention in public of the planned wall was in 1992 by then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The actual wall is 4 times longer than the Berlin Wall and up to 25 feet in height, with a large portion of it built on land not part of Israel. Construction on the wall began in 1994 following the Olso Accords of September 1993. By late 2003, over 112 miles had been constructed. In contrast, the Berlin Wall was 12 ft high and 103 miles long.
In 2004, Israel’s Wall was deemed illegal under international law. However the state continues to build it, expand it and confiscate land destroying thousands of Palestinian homes, businesses and agricultural properties, foreign of recompense, in addition to creating a network of Jewish Only roads throughout the Occupied Territory to connect the Jewish only colonies (also illegal under international law) throughout the territories Israel occupies. By contrast, Non-Jewish people must endure a network of hundreds of checkpoints and receive permits from Israel to travel between towns, visit relatives and in areas like Gaza, now surrounded by the wall, gain permission to even leave the country.
Despite the court ruling in the decade since, Israel has continued its pattern of injustice with impunity. The Wall and its associated regime of colonial settlements continue to grow in Palestine, embodying a massive instrument of land annexation, pillage of natural resources and displacement. The Wall marks the final brick in Israel’s apartheid project that defines the segregated enclaves to which the Palestinians are to be confined – a more cruel version of the Bantustans established by the former South African apartheid regime. Worldwide, Israel has succeeded in illustrating that walls are an acceptable model for governments to exclude, marginalize, dispossess, discriminate and segregate one people from each other.
Beginning in 2014, thirty organizations and coalitions have come together to declare July the Month Against the Apartheid Wall.
Twitter: #StopImpunity
Coalitions:
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign – Stop the Wall
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC); 27 member networks
Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO); over 135 member organizations
Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, 25 member organizations
Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI); 11 member organizations
Land Defense Coalition; 6 member organizations
Supporting Organizations:
Addameer – Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights
Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights
Center for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights “Hurriyyat”
Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR)
Jordan Valley Solidarity
Kairos Palestine
Land Research Center (LRC)
Muwatin, the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy
National Association for Democracy and Law
Palestinian Businesswomen’s Association (ASALA)
Palestinian Center for Democracy & Conflict Resolution (PCDCR)
Palestinian Farmers Union (PAFU)
Palestinian Federation of New Trade Unions
Palestinian Youth Union
Project Loving Care Society (PLC)
Rural Women Development Society
The Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ)
Union of Agriculture Work Committees (UAWC)
Women and Family Affairs Center
_____________
Apartheid is a word associated with South Africa in the years prior to 1992. However, the definition fits the parameters of Israeli law and conduct.
DEFINITION OF APARTHEID:
1. An official policy of racial segregation involving political, legal, and economic discrimination against one group of people by another due to their race, origin, faith or other determining factor.
2. A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups.
3. The condition of being separated from others; segregation.
__________
The wall was first proposed in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War by Ariel Sharon (whom ironically pretended to be against it in 2002) as a means for creating specific facts on the ground that would compliment the annexation of land via the settlement projects instituted at the conclusion of the 6-Day war in 1967. The actual planning of the wall began in 1978, nine years BEFORE the first Intifada (uprising) and fifteen years BEFORE the first suicide bomb. The wall was not planned for security. It was planned for annexation and disenfranchisement from the beginning as a means to create facts on the ground making it impossible for a contiguous state for non-Jewish people in the Holy Land. The first mention in public of the planned wall was in 1992 by then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
The actual wall is 4 times longer than the Berlin Wall and up to 25 feet in height, with a large portion of it built on land not part of Israel. Construction on the wall began in 1994 following the Olso Accords of September 1993. By late 2003, over 112 miles had been constructed. In contrast, the Berlin Wall was 12 ft high and 103 miles long.
In 2004, Israel’s Wall was deemed illegal under international law. However the state continues to build it, expand it and confiscate land destroying thousands of Palestinian homes, businesses and agricultural properties, foreign of recompense, in addition to creating a network of Jewish Only roads throughout the Occupied Territory to connect the Jewish only colonies (also illegal under international law) throughout the territories Israel occupies. By contrast, Non-Jewish people must endure a network of hundreds of checkpoints and receive permits from Israel to travel between towns, visit relatives and in areas like Gaza, now surrounded by the wall, gain permission to even leave the country.
Despite the court ruling in the decade since, Israel has continued its pattern of injustice with impunity. The Wall and its associated regime of colonial settlements continue to grow in Palestine, embodying a massive instrument of land annexation, pillage of natural resources and displacement. The Wall marks the final brick in Israel’s apartheid project that defines the segregated enclaves to which the Palestinians are to be confined – a more cruel version of the Bantustans established by the former South African apartheid regime. Worldwide, Israel has succeeded in illustrating that walls are an acceptable model for governments to exclude, marginalize, dispossess, discriminate and segregate one people from each other.
Beginning in 2014, thirty organizations and coalitions have come together to declare July the Month Against the Apartheid Wall.
Twitter: #StopImpunity
Coalitions:
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign – Stop the Wall
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC); 27 member networks
Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO); over 135 member organizations
Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, 25 member organizations
Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI); 11 member organizations
Land Defense Coalition; 6 member organizations
Supporting Organizations:
Addameer – Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights
Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights
Center for Defense of Liberties and Civil Rights “Hurriyyat”
Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR)
Jordan Valley Solidarity
Kairos Palestine
Land Research Center (LRC)
Muwatin, the Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy
National Association for Democracy and Law
Palestinian Businesswomen’s Association (ASALA)
Palestinian Center for Democracy & Conflict Resolution (PCDCR)
Palestinian Farmers Union (PAFU)
Palestinian Federation of New Trade Unions
Palestinian Youth Union
Project Loving Care Society (PLC)
Rural Women Development Society
The Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ)
Union of Agriculture Work Committees (UAWC)
Women and Family Affairs Center
PROMOTIONAL DETAILS
Event Sponsor:
Multiple Sponsors. See PENGON for information
Videos
Images
Downloads
Information on the Apartheid Wall
Fact Sheet on the Apartheid Wall
International Criminal Court Ruling on Israel's Wall
