Israeli defense wall fails to keep public attention: analysts

Six years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ)'s advisory opinion against the Israeli defense wall, analysts said the ongoing construction project had officially failed to keep the attention of the public.

"The peace movement hasn't taken up the issue because the ( Israeli) population overwhelmingly supported the wall as it was proposed by the Labour party. It never became an issue inside Israeli society," said Galia Golan, professor of government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.

THE WALL

The physical barrier between the Israeli and Palestinian populations was first suggested in 1992 by then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, following the murder of an Israeli girl in Jerusalem.

Noting that Israel must "take Gaza out of Tel Aviv," Rabin proposed a separation based on post 1967 borders that would include the majority of the Jewish residents of the state of Israel, and the whole Jerusalem.

The first sections of the wall, made up of slabs of concrete contiguous for miles, were constructed during the Oslo accords negotiations in 1994.

The mostly Israeli supporters of the wall, of which more than two thirds have already been built, argue that the barrier is necessary to protect Israeli civilians from Palestinian attack, including the suicide bombings that increased significantly during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which started in 2000.

There has been a radically reduced number of suicide bombings since the construction of the barrier and supporters believe that this is indicative of the barrier being effective in preventing such attacks.

"What's happened over the years is that there has been a broader recognition both at home and abroad that the Israeli barrier has been successful at deterring terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens and markedly lowering the amount of violence in general," Gerald Steinberg, a professor from Political Studies Department of Bar Ilan University, told Xinhua.

LEGAL ASPECT

He noted that part of the reason for the failure of the resistance inspired by the ICJ statement, is that it was not an official court ruling but rather a nonbinding opinion.

"The advisory opinion issued was led by political appointees rather than scholars, as a cause of which the actual majority advisory decision was broadly seen by Europeans and Americans as lacking validity," Steinberg said.

Analysts noted that the wall appeared to be mostly accepted by populations on both sides as a de facto reality.

"There is only a small group of Israeli activists that goes and protests alongside Palestinians at a few spots along the wall," Golan, who is actively involved with the human rights group Peace Now, said.

"Security on the Israeli side was significantly improved and economic growth on the Palestinian side also widely benefited," Steinberg added.

Still, the official Palestinian opinion has not wavered from its staunch objection to what they refer to as the racial segregation wall.

"The relevant department of the Palestinian government made a press conference on Tuesday announcing several activities to commemorate this anniversary and remind the world that the international legal system has failed to bring Israel to abidance, " said Ghassan Khatib, director of non-governmental organization Jerusalem Media and Communications Center.

"We continue to do the two things we can do. First of all, we continue to work on creating an international consensus and pressure against this wall and secondly we continue to encourage the Palestinian public to resist the settlement activities including this project," he added.

OBJECTION

The main objection to the fence is that its route substantially deviates from the Green Line into the territories captured by Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967. It is thus seen as an illegal attempt to annex Palestinian land under the guise of security and furthermore restricts Palestinians who live nearby, from travelling freely within the West Bank and to access work in Israel.

The Israeli objective in building the wall across the Green Line at certain points is to include Jewish communities located near the 1949 armistice line, which comprise the majority of Jewish residents of the West Bank. Both the United States' Clinton and Bush administrations agreed that any deal to be negotiated for a two-state solution would include these settlement blocks.

But the Palestinian leadership are not the only ones opposed to the wall. Many residents of the Jewish communities scattered throughout the West Bank view the wall as a unilateral land give- away and lament Israel's painful compromise to cut off part of its biblical heritage.

"It's an ugly barrier no matter which side you look at it from, and no less limiting and claustrophobic to us on the other side," said Yifat, a resident of Matte Binyamin, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Some analysts said while the specific fight against the wall may have proven impotent, it did give rise to alternative forms of resistance.

"Though this effort failed, it allowed for the development of an alternative weapon by which to fight Israel called "lawfare," the use of legal proceedings against Israelis, the radius of which has grown in, for example, Canada against firms that were related to the building of the defense wall," Steinberg said.

There is also an increasing amount of court cases against Israelis in Britain and Spain as the international criminal court is considering a Palestinian request to open a case against Israeli military figures for alleged war crimes.

Some of the cases have been brought up against Israeli ministers. Tzipi Livni, the current Israeli opposition leader and leader of Kadima, the largest party in the parliament, for example cancelled a trip to Britain a few months ago because a judge was prepared to issue a warrant against her for allegations of war crimes related to the Gaza offensive in 2008 and 2009.

Source: Xinhua