Only Half the Story (Report #35)

by Jerry Levin

Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine

April 13, 2004

Don't tell me it's a "separation" fence, which is what too many Israelis and their Israel-right-or-wrong supporters are calling the "annexation" wall/fence. Don't tell me that, unless you mean that as of today huge portions of the West Bank have been unilaterally "separated" from Palestine. That, of course, is hardly what the so-called "peace process" has been purportedly about. What actually is underway right now is a "piece process" (enabled by the United States government) in which piece by piece Palestine is relentlessly being absorbed into a newly emerging "greater" Israel.

However, from what I have been able to determine, even those of us here in the West Bank, back home, and elsewhere who are opposing the "annexation" wall/fence may not be completely grasping the full impact of the success of this monumental unilateral land grab. That's because most of the attention "annexation" wall/fence has been getting has been focused mostly on what is happening in the northern and central portions of the West Bank.

But that is only half the story.

Even though there are not miles and miles of long sections of serpentine "annexation" wall/fence to be seen that are dramatically laying bare the massive expropriation of Palestinian territory that is inexorably taking place in the south, the same old same old relentless "annexation" process is underway there too. For instance around Hebron, where there is no "annexation" wall/fence like the one in the north to be seen, the decades long campaign of annexation "walling" and "fencing" continues. And this annexation process has been and continues to be just as dramatically successful as the "annexation" wall/fence has been and is in the north.

The main difference is that the insidious annexation "walling" "fencing" process in the south gets virtually no attention in the conventional overseas press, not to mention from many governments: for instance U. S. State Department officials. Essentially the response we get from low-level functionaries, who are the only ones to whom we normally have access, is essentially, "Your story has touched our hearts, but