Palestinians remind "shame wall", world marks Berlin Wall fall

10/11/2009| IslamWeb

Palestinian activists tried to get rid of at least a portion of Israel's "shame" wall in occupied West Bank on Monday.

The efforts come as world leaders converged on the German capital to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the toppling of the Berlin Wall.

Around 100 demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and wearing fluorescent jackets reading, "We are going to Jerusalem," near the Qalandiya military checkpoint, Maan news agency said. "Israeli forces also opened fire", the report said.

Early reports said the demonstration was planned by the "popular committees" – local groups organized to oppose the construction of the wall – as well as the Fatah movement.

Last Friday, protesters in the village of Ni'lin also managed to tear down a section of the wall.

Intended to be 709 kilometers in length, Israel had completed 413 kilometers of the wall by June 2009, according to the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The barrier, in reality a network of walls, fences, watchtowers and checkpoints, snakes through the interior of the West Bank, looping around Israeli settlements and fragmenting Palestinian communities.

"Equal quality of life"

Tens of thousands thronged the route of the Berlin Wall for emotional celebrations and world leaders joined huge crowds.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "German unity is still incomplete," Merkel told ARD public television, noting how east Germany still lagged behind the west in economic growth, with joblessness nearly twice as high.

"We must tackle this problem if we want to achieve equal quality of life."

Shaken by mass flight of its citizens into capitalist West Berlin, Communist East Germany began erecting its "anti-fascist protection barrier" in the early hours of Aug. 13, 1961.

According to a study published this year, at least 136 people were killed at the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989 while trying to escape.

Thousands, however, managed to evade the minefields, dogs and guards in watchtowers, using ingenious schemes including tunnels, aerial wires and hidden compartments in cars in order to make it to the West.

Helmut Schmidt, the 90-year-old former Chancellor who led West Germany from 1974 to 1982, told public broadcaster NDR he was "deeply moved" when the Wall fell.

"I always knew we'd have the chance in Europe some day to reunite the two postwar German states, but I didn't think I'd live to see it," he said. "It almost overwhelmed me."

With some Germans, the 1990 reunification of the country remains a sore point. Several hundred leftist demonstrators on Saturday protested against the planned celebrations in Berlin.

A new poll of over 1,000 Germans carried out for the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily showed one in eight wanted the Wall rebuilt -- with the numbers nearly equal in East and West.

Survivors from the Cold War have been reflecting on the day when East Germany opened its border to the west after thousands of its citizens began slipping out from behind the Iron Curtain via Hungary's frontier with Austria in the summer of 1989.

"Shame wall"

International Criminal Court in the Hague ruled on 9 July 2004 that Israel's separation wall should be demolished in a decision that were all agreed by the judges by a margin of 14-1.

The verdict, requested by the UN's general assembly says "Israel's wall is illegal, it must be removed and adequate compensation paid," Israel has ignored this and pressed on with its construction.

The wall leaves some 80 percent of Jewish settlements on the Israeli side, leading the court to conclude that the route of the wall threatened to create "de facto annexation", with the wall itself described as severely impeding "the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination".

Palestinians refer to the barrier as the "shame wall" and view it as nothing more than a land grab by Israel to help support and expand settlements in the West Bank.

The landmark ruling had rejected Israel arguments, saying "that the wall cannot be justified by security concerns, is detrimental to the rights of local Palestinians and violates international law.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Palestinian stands atop the Israeli barrier during a protest marking the 20th anniversary of the toppling of the Berlin Wall, in the al-Amari refugee camp in the West Bank city of Ramallah November 9, 2009.

 

Agencies