From Kommunistisk Politik, No. 3, January 31, 2004. By Henning Paaske Jensen, Member of the Central Committee of the Workers' Communist Party of Denmark (APK) and the Coordinating Committee of the Boycott Israel Campaign in Denmark.
The condemnation of the apartheid wall by the UN General Assembly and its transfer of the wall construction issue to the International Court of Justice in The Hague have caused great unease in Israel and the US.
For Israel, it is not an easy task to defend an act which cannot be defended: the construction of a wall of segregation far within illegally occupied area for the “defence” of the development of illegal settlements.
Israel fears the trial at The Hague Court.
“There is a danger that we will be exposed to an international boycott as was the case before the fall of the regime in South Africa,” Israeli Minister of Justice Tommy Lapid told the Cabinet, according to his spokesman.
Therefore, he tried to set the ground for changing the route of the apartheid wall, a route that will confiscate 50 percent of the West Bank and cut it up into enclaves like the Bantustans (homelands) in South Africa during apartheid and the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. Now, the Israeli government is considering if a few tactical and cosmetic changes can be made.
At the same time, Israel has started to build an opposition to The Hague Court regarding its relevance and validity, and is seeking support from especially the US. Both countries are experts when it comes to double standards. International law does not apply to them. Therefore, Sharon has again been invited to the White House for an early visit.
Now, a strategy for “damage control” is being planned, that is, a plan for ensuring the smallest possible damage at The Hague Court. If there are two who stand together, it is the clones Israel and the US.
In words, the US has expressed doubts about the apartheid wall, but it has been doubts without any weight. As one of the only countries besides Israel, the US voted against the condemnation of the wall by the UN General Assembly, and later the US also voted against that the wall issue should be transferred to the hearing in The Hague.
In his recent war speech to the nation, which was one long defence of the criminal US war on terror and of the occupation of Iraq, Bush cleverly managed not to mention the construction of the apartheid wall. It was not mentioned despite the fact that Bush has earlier talked about that the wall with its location does not promote peace in the area.
According to the US, the main problem is the Palestinian “terror”, a blanket term for the legitimate right of the Palestinian people of resisting their Israeli occupiers.
Using threatening phrases, Israel has warned Jordan not to support the international campaign against the wall. Jordan rightly feels that the pressure on its borders will increase as the conditions of life in the Occupied Territories become more and more unbearable.
In fact, one of Sharon’s ministers has stated that it should be possible to build a Palestinian state in Northern Jordan.
The fear that Israel, by means of terror, humiliation and executions, makes life so intolerable that this will cause a flood of Palestinian refugees into Jordan is not taken out of the blue. The ghettoisation of the West Bank fits all too well into Sharon’s old plan about a Greater Israel to the Jordan River. The confinement of the Palestinians in ghetto prisons on the West Bank might very well be the first part of the plan.
Israel’s great dilemma is that it has big colonial plans, but it can no longer carry them out by referring to the Holocaust. Israel’s sympathy credit is running out. Its conduct in the Occupied Territories and now the extension of the apartheid wall meet huge opposition in the world. Israel’s last card is now to try to equal any criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism. If Jews put forward the criticism, they are declared self-haters and almost traitors.
Israel’s fear of an anti-apartheid campaign as the one against South Africa is not groundless.
The question is not if such an international campaign will see the light of the day, but when it will happen.
Nothing indicates that Israel, backed by the US, will voluntarily draw in its horns. It is completing the apartheid wall. A finished prison wall can very well mean that the international campaign against the wall will become combined with an anti-apartheid campaign for the total isolation of Israel.
If The Hague Court is to regain any authority, it should not be difficult for it to speak against the illegal apartheid wall. But the case can easily take both months and years, while the wall is being extended and completed in short time.
Here and now, the international campaign for stopping and tearing down the apartheid wall must be given full attention and be connected with the trial at The Hague Court as a first step of forcing Israel out of the Occupied Territories.
Internationally, this demand will sound louder and louder: Stop Apartheid
Israel!
Tear down the wall!