Israel’s New Wailing Wall

Israel's New Wailing Wall

October 17, 2004

Op-Ed column

It is a ritual as old as the Bible. On a rocky hillside, a mile from the sand-colored walls of the ancient city of Jerusalem, a shepherd boy guides his flock to safety for the night.

As he reaches the top of a ridge, Mohamed Halibi stops and frowns. The path his goats and sheep have taken for years from Israel into the West Bank is now blocked by an insurmountable intrusion of modern politics - a concrete wall, almost 30 feet high.

Standing atop that ridge on a recent trip to Israel, I watched Halibi take another path as a golden sun sunk behind the Jerusalem hills. "I can't go the old way anymore," he told me.

In a landscape accustomed to unusual twists of fate, the building of a wall to separate people has become one of the most controversial new ingredients in the unpredictable Middle East political stew. The Israeli government erected the wall as part of a "security fence" designed to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from crossing into Israel. It was hardly an original concept. A decade earlier, the British Army put up 30-foot-high "peace walls" between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Belfast.

But, unlike many Belfast residents who saw their walls as protection, Palestinians dismiss the wall as an overt attempt by the Israeli government to corral them into tiny enclaves while annexing more pieces of the West Bank for Israeli settlements. Meanwhile, many deeply religious Jews also oppose the wall, claiming their government should not fence off land they believe was given to them by God.

"A wall? Through the land of Israel?" wondered Daniel Luria, leader of Ateret Cohanim, one of several spiritually based groups trying to create more Jewish communities. "You don't divide up and give away."

Despite its detractors, the wall has achieved a basic goal of significantly curtailing the bloody wave of suicide attacks in Israel. In the last year, the Israeli military says the system of chain-link fences, concrete walls and other security barriers along sections of the West Bank north of Jerusalem have stopped all but three suicide bombers - down from 26 in the year before the barrier was put up.

Israel security experts see the recent bombings of Israelis vacationing at Egyptian resorts as an attempt by terrorists to find other targets.

The wall, however, is far more than just a matter of political debate. It plays an intimate role in the lives of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians - especially in Abu Dis, neighborhood straddling the ancient road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea.

A decade ago, Abu Dis was thought to be a possible capital of a new Palestinian nation. Not far from the path where Mohamed Halibi guided his flock of sheep and goats sits building that was supposed to hold the Palestinian parliament. The building is now vacant and windowless. The new security wall stands less than 100 meters away.

One evening in late August , Haya Abece walked through a nearby gap in the wall, her blue Muslim headscarf blowing in the wind as she grasped the hands of a son and daughter. Two Israeli soldiers, holding M-16 rifles, gazed from a vacant home they used as a guard house.

What they watched is a new ritual of Abu Dis - Palestinians quietly passing through openings in the wall to visit friends or relatives on the other side. Or as Haya Abece noted: "I live in Jerusalem. My mother lives over there."

It may seem like a simple passage. It's not. Even if the journey goes off without a hitch - on this day, the soldiers said nothing to Abece - many Palestinians feel humiliated, knowing streets that once connected one side of Abu Dis to the other are now blocked.

"I used to drive from Bethany in five or six minutes," said Sam Forun, a Palestinian cab driver. "Now it can take an hour."

The same is true for a hardy group of Jewish families who have moved into two houses just up the hill - and next to the wall. Getting to Jerusalem is still barrier-free. But traveling to other West Bank settlements now involves a series of long detours.

The families are part of a new community - Kidmat Zion - built by Ateret Cohanim on land it claims once belonged to Jewish families who fled during Arab riots in the 1920s. The community has only the two homes - purchased from Palestinians - but promises to build more.

On another sunny afternoon, Miriam Schor, who moved only a few weeks earlier from Hebron with her husband Malachi, walked onto the roof of her new home and took in the view.

To the west, Schor could see Jerusalem. She smiled and said, "Where else would a Jew want to live?" Schor then looked eastward - to the security wall only 100 feet away. Her smile disappeared.

"I don't like it," she said. "I understand why it's there. But look what it does to the view."

Down the slope from Schor's home, the wall has become a canvas for graffiti artists. There are messages to the United Nations, to the United States, to Israel. But one message seems appropriate for Jews and Palestinians alike.

"Wailing wall," it says.