The Barrier

As part of his justification for his wall, Trump likes to use Israel’s wall as his example of a barrier that will keep out illegal immigrants who bring drugs and crime into America which in his mind seems to be anyone coming to the southern border, including toddlers who are coming here to join MS-13.

As he told Sean Hannity,

“A wall protects. All you have to do is ask Israel. They were having a total disaster coming across and they had a wall. It’s 99.9 percent stoppage.”

He may not be aware of the fences along its borders with Egypt, and Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, but he is certainly talking about the one built along and inside the West Bank which was built for reasons not related at all to why he wants his wall.

That barrier was constructed as a result of a surge of terrorist attacks. It was intended to regulate Palestinian movement into Israel, and does not block progress, but regulates the comings and goings of Palestinians into and out of land taken by Israel, and even onto and off of those sections of their own property separated by the wall.

There is a convent, for example, that supports its works from the olives grown in its olive garden, but the wall separates their convent from its garden.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, the empire might have evaporated, but the people it ruled over in Palestine were still there and thought they would no longer be ruled by a non-native power.

What people, long ruled by outsiders, would not be thrilled that they were now free to rule themselves?

However, also after World War I, Europe divided up the now defunct Empire, and England got Palestine.

As Hitler came to power and things got rather dicey for European Jews, many decided it was time to return to the land of their ancestors, and so began the Aliyah Bet which was the name given to the “illegal” immigration by Jews, who after WWII were mostly Holocaust survivors, to Mandatory Palestine between 1934 and 1948, in violation of the restrictions laid out in the British White Paper.

The White Paper of 1939 was a policy paper issued by the British government in response to the 1936–39 Arab Revolt, the uprising by Palestinian Arabs against the British administration of the Palestine Mandate, which demanded Arab independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases meant to establish a “Jewish National Home” in the land the Palestinians thought was theirs again with the fall of the Ottomans.

Over 100,000 people attempted to illegally enter Mandatory Palestine through 142 voyages on 120 ships. The British navy intercepted many of these ships either sending the passengers back to Europe, or, in a less than a good PR move, sending about 50,000 to detention camps.

The most famous interception was the SS Exodus of movie and song fame (who in any chorus in the 1960s didn’t sing the words “This land is mine. God gave this land to me”?) .

As usually happens when a colonial power makes a decision about people whose land they claim, the paper made a unilateral decision about someone else’s home which called for the establishment of a Jewish national home in an independent Palestinian state within 10 years, limited the amount of Jews entering Palestine to 75,000 for five years with further immigration to be determined by the Arab majority, and rejecting the idea of partitioning Palestine into three parts to create a Palestinian nation, a Jewish state, and a mixed residence area.

There were also restrictions on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs, but think the theoretical, but not serious, treatment of Indian Territory established by the U.S. Government.

Following its approval on May 23, 1939, it was the governing policy for Mandatory Palestine from 1939 until the British departure in 1948.

But neither the Palestinian Arabs nor the Jews in Israel were all that happy with the Paper.

When war was declared in 1939, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared:

‘We will fight the White Paper as if there is no war, and fight the war as if there is no White Paper.’

And, the Aliyah Bet began.

The State of Israel was established in 1948, but it wasn’t a clean political act, and while the Palestinians fought to keep what they had, Israel fought to keep what it had, and then some.

Israel began constructing fences and concrete walls in 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising when suicide bombers were detonating themselves in cafes and buses in Israeli cities.

Now, while this might be a black eye on the Palestinians as it is recent history, it should be remembered that, on the road to an Israeli state, Israeli operatives bombed the empty offices of the British Mandate’s Immigration Department and Income Tax Offices, made a series of attacks on police stations in which six policemen were killed, and In 1944 assassinated the British Resident Minister in the Middle East.

The most noted terrorist attack by Israeli operatives was the bombing of the King David Hotel where 91 people, mostly British, Arabs, and Jews, were killed.

The Israelis had resorted to acts of terrorism to get what they wanted.

The Palestinians are not unique on using terrorists attacks for their ends.

Another name for erectile dysfunction is impotency. cheap tadalafil canada You may order one of them from the online order viagra generika placing system. Well, the credit of all functions of the device are same. 3. http://amerikabulteni.com/2013/01/18/necdet-yilmaz-yazdi-burhan-dogancaya-veda-ederken/ levitra cheapest With the increasing craze of gadgets among people, it is important to be aware that self-medicating is potentially very pharmacy viagra prices dangerous, so always consult your physician before buying any type of medicine online. When the United Nations arrived at an agreement that favored Israel and its increasing population over the Palestinians who had been there, a war broke out. As the international underdogs, as a result of the support Israel received from the United Nations, the United States, and Great Britain, 250,000 Arabs fled and leaders of the neighboring Arab states stepped in.

In 1948 Ben-Gurion and company declared a Jewish state, and both US President Truman and Soviet leader Stalin recognized it. Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine, marched their forces into what had been the British Mandate for Palestine, and the first Arab-Israeli war was begun.

When hostilities ended with an armistice, Britain released over 2,000 Jewish detainees, and within three years immigration doubled the Jewish population of Israel, while 726,000 Palestinians had either fled or were evicted by the Israelis.

In 1950 the Knesset passed the Law of Return which granted to all Jews and those of Jewish ancestry, and their spouses, the right to settle in Israel and gain citizenship which obviously required land, and that included the land owned by Palestinians.

You can see the problem created and why the Palestinians are not happy with losing their land to settlements that are built on land Israel just takes because of that line in the song, “This land is mine. God gave this land to me”-the Israeli version of Manifest Destiny.

The problem for Israel with constructing a wall was that it would constitute a border between Israel and the territories that could become an independent Palestinian state making those lands clearly untouchable for the taking for settlements.

Trump’s wall cannot be built right on the border as that could mean encroachment on the land of another sovereign nation, and built a little back from the actual border would mean inaccessibility to U.S. land on the other side.

In some cases, including a golf course, some U.S. citizens with property on the border would become the nuns separated from their olive garden.

Great care was taken to make sure the “wall” would skirt settlements and strategic areas of the West Bank that Israel wanted to keep on its side in the event of any future peace deal which created humanitarian problems for thousands of Palestinians trapped in enclaves between the barrier and Israel proper.

The International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s building of a barrier inside the occupied territory was illegal.

Israel ignored it.

While Israeli officials call it an “anti-terror obstacle”, Palestinians call the wall a “racist separation” or “apartheid” wall.

The claim that the wall has been effective in and of itself is as short sighted as saying the crime rate in El Paso Texas that had gone done did so because of a barrier erected after the fact.

Hamas put a moratorium on suicide bombings, the Israeli military still carries out nightly raids in Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps on the other side of the wall to arrest people suspected of being militants, and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority cooperates with the Israelis to prevent attacks against Israel.

50,000 people legally cross daily through a series of checkpoints that puncture the winding 400-mile barrier.

Up to 60,000 Palestinians without work permits work in construction, agriculture, or service industries in Israel, passing through gaps in the wall or by utilizing the services of local smugglers. And occasionally, there are Palestinians who carry out terrorist attacks.

The non-permitted workers are usually just sent back if they are caught, but as their labor is needed for Israel’s economy, border crossers are not that strictly pursued

The workers sneak over for familiar reasons. Unemployment in the Palestinian territories is high, wages low, and the Israeli military argues that the economic well-being of Palestinians contributes to stability and security.

As far as ending terrorist attacks, just as the claim that a wall on the Southern border will curtail the drugs that come into airports and seaports by way of planes and boats, including El Chapo’s submarine, is a weak one, claiming the Israeli wall controls terrorist attacks is weak as Hamas has developed rockets and tunnels to bypass the barrier.

Obviously, although Trump concentrates on the Israeli wall, security is the result of a multi-pronged approach that he ignores as it interferes with his fantasy.

Israel’s wall is not equivalent to the wall Trump wants.

The history leading up to its construction is different.

Its purpose and usage are different.

And it was constructed by the invaders who ignored the rules, not the inhabitants.

 

 

 

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