Israel’s ‘security fence’ disrupts life for Palestinians

For Muntaser Qreishi, a local farmer, getting to his fields used to mean a 40-minute donkey cart ride along one of 10 dirt roads leading from the village.

Qreishi still travels to his fields by donkey cart, but due to construction of a 540-mile long wall which the state of Israel calls a “security fence” and Palestinians and other observers call a “segregation barrier,” the trip can often take more than two hours, assuming the only gate in the wall separating Jayyous from some of its best farmland is even open.

Construction of the wall has been roundly condemned by the international community, including the United States. The wall, which is estimated to cost Israel $1.5 million US per mile to construct, is dividing Palestinian communities, destroying farmland and trees and separating Palestinians from their water sources.

In some places the wall is a 25-foot-high concrete barrier and in other places a series of razor-wire fences with electronic sensors. The Israeli government says the wall is to keep out Palestinians intent on harming Israeli citizens. Estimates are that nearly 63,000 Palestinians will be cut off from their land.

Muntser Qreishi (foreground) works in his field gathering vegetables with Ziad Jayyousi in the background. Photo by Jackie Hogue

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and other aid agencies, already stretched by needs resulting from nearly two years of conflict in the region, are now responding to the impact of the wall on Palestinians.

The wall is having dire humanitarian consequences, reports Abdel-Latif Khaled of the Palestinian Hydrology Group, which is working with MCC and other groups to renovate water sources damaged by the wall construction.

Israeli bulldozers have uprooted nearly 4,000 trees and leveled more than 125 acres of land in Jayyous, Khaled reported.

MCC, along with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Palestinian Hydrology Group, is working with Qreishi and other farmers in the region to repair wells and water networks. The cost for the renovation of seven wells and waterways, which provide water for 368 families and nearly 463 acres of agricultural land, is approximately $56,240.

This effort is part of a wider humanitarian program by MCC, CRS and the Lutheran World Federation to assist Palestinian communities and families whose livelihoods have been devastated by the closure of Palestinian towns and villages due to ongoing violence and by the wall construction.

MCC and other church organizations are expressing concern about the wall to policymakers in Washington, D.C. Churches for Middle East Peace, of which MCC is a member, and World Vision are delivering copies of the book, Stop the Wall in Palestine, published by PENGON, to key members of Congress, expressing concern that the wall’s construction is undermining a viable, two-state resolution to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict.

—Alain Epp Weaver, co-country representative for MCC Palestine.