Published: 18 August 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
EVERY JEWISH ISRAELI who travels to Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank and encounters soldiers on the way out is familiar with their shocked response. “What, you were there, in Ramallah?!” they will ask, as if you had just returned from a wild land, as if you had come out alive from hell itself.
The separation barrier has contributed greatly to this perception, which most Jewish Israelis share. As if the barrier managed to segregate Israelis from Palestinians, us here and them there, beyond the mountains of darkness.
The tens of thousands of Palestinians who crossed freely into Israel through the recent breaches in the barrier, in many instances under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers, are challenging this perception.
But for some senior Israeli officials who are familiar with the situation, this is no surprise. The barrier acts mostly as a symbol, and does not really separate Israelis and Palestinians, because Palestinians travel past it all the time. Israel’s security system is relatively indifferent to this movement; it only cares that people don’t talk about it.
The barrier makes life for Palestinians extremely difficult, separating them from each other and from their land, or from their workplaces in Israel. But even on a normal day, and more so in recent years, it does not prevent tens of thousands of Palestinians from entering Israel — whether they have permits or not, through holes in the barrier, or from the dozens of kilometres-long stretches of land where the barrier remains incomplete.
FULL STORY The separation barrier is an illusion — and Israel knows it (972)
Photo: Palestinians walking through a hole in the Israeli separation barrier next to the West Bank village of Far’oun near Tulkarem (ActiveStills)
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