23/06/2004

Director of Health Development and Information Policy Institute
Palestine Media Centre, El Bireh, Ramallah
Tuesday 22 June, 2004

The purpose of the press conference was to address four specific elements of the continuing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories:

- No Israeli intention of a real withdrawal from Gaza
- Israel’s continuing rapid construction of the Apartheid Wall through the West Bank
- Non-violent peaceful protest
- Update of statistics and conditions within the Occupied Palestinian territories.

Firstly, placing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘painful concession’ in the context of last months horrendous attacks on the Gaza communities of Rafah and al Zeitoun, Dr. Barghouthi explained that there are two aspects to the withdrawal from Gaza: What is really occurring on the ground and furthermore, Sharon’s goals behind any proposed ‘withdrawal’ plan. Examining the first aspect he believes, clearly demonstrates the clarity of the latter and that there is in fact no Israeli intention of real withdrawal.

Once again the most critical junctures of this conflict are being played-out through a battle of narrative and Israel is fostering misunderstanding. Withdrawal is not only proving hard to juxtapose with continued events on the ground, it is contradicted by the very decisions coming out of the Israeli Government - on the whole, overwhelmingly preoccupied with sustaining control, of borders, of territorial waters, airspace and international relations. The Israeli Government is not planning to carry out a withdrawal but rather a re-deployment.

Looking at Rafah Dr. Barghouthi highlighted the Israeli policy behind its latest assaults. In Rafah houses were, and continue to be, systematically destroyed to establish a wide corridor of control along the Philidelphi Route. The mass destruction of homes in Rafah was not one isolated activity but part of a process of systematic ethnic cleansing aimed at establishing Israeli presence along Gaza’s border with Egypt.

The United Nations estimates that a total of 3,451 people were made homeless in Rafah between May 1 and 28. Since the start of the Intifada in 2000, UNRWA estimates that 14,666 Palestinians have been made homeless in Rafah alone. Between September 2000 and December last year 60,781 homes had been either demolished or partly destroyed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

With Israel maintaining military and economic control over the area, and most importantly controlling all passages too and from Gaza the withdrawal will in reality be no more than a re-deployment that will turn the area into a large imprisoned entity or even homeland, as was carried out during the Apartheid era in South Africa. This homeland will be subjected to total control by the Occupiers.


If Sharon’s intentions are not to withdraw from Gaza his rhetoric has in any case proven an exceptional decoy to the media, particularly distracting attention from Israel’s rapid construction of the Apartheid Wall through the West Bank.

The construction of the wall - which is unmistakably stealing Palestinian agricultural land, water resources and ultimately determining a re-drawn border under the pre-text of Israeli security – has continued largely unabated since construction began almost two years ago (and despite the (still) pending advisory opinion of the international court of justice in The Hague).

The catastrophic humanitarian, economic and social impacts of the wall on the Palestinian population get worse and worse. Dr. Barghouthi highlighted the northern district of Salfit where he has visited on several occasions since building work began there two weeks ago.

In this area the Apartheid wall will loop 25km deep into the West Bank encircling the already walled large Jewish settlements of Ariel, Kedumim and Immanuel but further confiscating huge amounts of Palestinian land and in so doing, compounding the socioeconomic and humanitarian difficulties already being felt by a population under constant occupation. The construction of the wall will confiscate 14,000 dunums of land from the city however from the surrounding district 170,000 dunums will be lost. In the villages of Rafat, Deir Ballut, Zawiya and Masha, the wall will confiscate around 90% of the villages’ land leaving behind only the buildings - this in the district which generates more than 30% of Palestine’s total olive oil production.

Israel is effectively creating yet another enclave, this time enclosing and isolating the villages of Deir Ballut, Rafat, Zawiya and Masha. In Deir Ballut, no one is able to pass through the checkpoint at the entrance to the village, after 7pm. This includes ambulances transporting patients. Dr. Barghouthi likened the situation to that of Qalqilya where the city of 46,000 people is now effectively a ghetto, surrounded by the Wall with only one gated entrance. In Qalqilya, Dr. Barghouthi remarked, the residents say that they can no longer see the sunset.

The construction of the wall is continuing at an alarming rate in several areas of the West Bank. Dr. Barghouthi also drew attention to the Ar Ram and Dahiet Al Barid neighborhoods of north Jerusalem. In this area 271,000 residents will be affected where, by creating many small enclaves and ghettos, Israel is attempting to dramatically transform the demographics of Jerusalem cutting off 80,000 Jerusalemites from the city and then very likely confiscating their IDs and with them the rights and social services they are entitled to.

Dr. Barghouthi who has been visiting both affected areas in the last week wanted to bring particular attention to the mass movements of non-violent peaceful protest. There has been no suicide bombing attack in Israel since February 23, this the result he believes, of a great deal of self-restraint on behalf of the Palestinian population but also of a changing attitude and increasing awareness of the positive bearing of non-violent protest. The world has for a long time called on the Palestinian people to explore this route of resistance now that it is taking form the international media have a responsibility to portray it.

The people of Zawiya have been demonstrating for 14 days consecutively – Dr. Barghouthi expressed utter shock at the scenes of violence he had witnessed of Israeli armed forces firing large amounts of tear gas and live rounds of ammunition at peaceful demonstrators.

The continued construction of the Wall, under the guise of Israeli security is simply a pretext for the creeping annexation of West Bank land and a unilateral determination of the border. The Israeli government has for the first time made unreservedly clear its intentions to annex further large parts of the West Bank including large Israeli settlement blocks openly declaring these intentions via a Government Resolution. This further annexation of Palestinian land is attempting to be legitimized by Israel in the claim that such annexation can serve as compensation for giving up Gaza. Sharon’s objective of creating facts on the ground, to then be recognized as such, has been enhanced no end by the Bush Government’s support of these idiosyncratic Israeli designs to take 58% of the West Bank.

The unreserved construction of the Wall means that what is happening on the ground now is not progress towards peace but rather progress towards the death of the two state solution. This is a continuation of the Oslo plans, whereby maps drawn up by the Israeli army, not the Government, let alone with any input from Palestinian sources, are dictating policy as was the reality behind Oslo ten years ago. In such a climate of despair over the realization of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state it is a forced reality and not a surprise that a greater number of Palestinians are turning their thoughts towards a struggle for a bi-national, democratic state, a struggle for one man, one vote.


Finally, Dr. Barghouthi took the opportunity to present an update of statistics and conditions within the Occupied Palestinian territories. After almost 4 years of Intifada, which began on the 28th of September 2000, 3,139 Palestinians have now lost their lives. Of this number, some 19% (592) are children, age 17 and below and 198 were Women. 113 Palestinians have died at checkpoints. Some 87 have died due to prevention of medical treatment. (30 of those were children, 20 were newborns). 357 Palestinians have been killed in extrajudicial assassinations, 166 were bystanders, or not the intended target. Of these 25 were women and 37 were children. In the last years of the Intifada more than 51,000 Palestinians have been injured; at the very least 2,500 of those have been left permanently disabled.

The IDF and Israel prison service currently hold more than 7,200 Palestinians, 2,300 have been charged 3,700 are still awaiting trial and 1,200 are being held in administrative detention which is renewed regularly. Over 2,200 children have been arrested since the beginning of the Intifada and about 362 remain currently incarcerated in Israeli detention centers & prisons.

Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As the majority of those detained are male, the number of Palestinians detained forms approximately 40% of the total male Palestinian population in the OPT, that’s almost one in two men imprisoned.