The ‘aparthied wall’ and settlement expansion
saleh on December 27th, 2004There are three cases where settlement expansion is suddenly exploding because of the wall, bringing into focus the real intentions of building the wall. They are:
Jayyous/Zufin with the expansion at Nofei Zufim, Nof HaSharon and Nirit/ Alfei Menashe, Har Gilo/Gilo West and Wallaje.
Without the wall, private contractors would not be interested in any of these places, whereas now, with the wall, no Israelis will be living next to “Arabs” where once those areas were not at all sought after.
Politically the link is now easy to see between the Wall and settlement expansion despite all past promises and statements as to Israel’s intentions. The facts on the ground now speak louder than words.
Israeli past obfuscation as to not wanting to expand settlements & promising to allow farmers access to their land can now be seen as yet another Israeli bluff. A smokescreen, behind which the building and its strategy were planned.
In Jayyous this is the most striking, because the Palestinians in this village are a farming community which is now being completely cut off from its land by the wall. No farmers are affected elsewhere as badly, and therefore threatened with “transfer” once they have lost their only means of providing for themselves.
The Israeli strategy (IDF, settlers and government) has been to target the Palestinian landowners who do not have water rights, either by declaring their lands “state land” or by weakening their hold on their land by cutting them off from their water supply or irrigation system.
Once the land is dried out, and the Palestinians are denied access in various ways (labourers’ access denied, or keeping the gates closed for weeks at a time during Israeli high holidays, or making hours the gates are open incompatible with basic farming needs, military courts not allowing the court file to be opened, etc.), that land then only has value as prime real estate for building. In Jayyous, it is no coincidence that the owner of the Lidar company which is going to be developing the Nofei Zufim expansion of Zufin is Israel’s reputedly wealthiest man, Lev Leviev.
