”Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,…” (Robert Frost)
Having lived 3 years with the WALL around and winding in and through much of my nearby neighbor of Bethlehem in Palestine’s interior, I learned to fiercely hate this abomination. It repulsed every decent sensibility within me. I saw quickly that the WALL has desecrated the landscape of green terraced olive-grove hillsides. It tore up neighborhoods. Its 3 and 1/2 ft. thickness defied rationality. Its massive height dwarfed humans standing in its shadows. It ripped up good farmland, homes, buildings in its way, and at the same time in a mean-spirited way destroyed 1000 yr. old olive trees, the economy of the people.
It needs to be known that slab by slab of this monstrosity spelled out U.S. tax dollars at work for “security” purposes. All the people of Palestine knew that the real reason for the Wall was to steal more of the Palestinians’ land, decimate their economy, break their spirit. Now instead of easy access to markets, to worship, to land, to education, to health services, it would take more time and expense for the Palestinians to survive.
Examples of the Wall’s senselessness were all around me. I felt helpless for the Anastas family e.g. whose home was surrounded on three sides by giant slabs of concrete, like huge primordial creatures squeezing together and flattening their home to smithereens. It was impossible for this family to see the sunrise. I felt for the hundreds of workers who had to daily make their way through the Wall’s labyrinthine main checkpoint from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. One young man said he had to start at 3:30 am to make it to work at 8:00 am. He felt like he was living in “quicksand.” I felt with the men and women whose eyes were glued on the numerous illegal Israeli colonies passing us by as we traveled together from Hebron to Bethlehem. Their painful stares always gave me shivers. Once their farms had replaced this present landscape. I could hardly stomach the stories like the mother who had to carry her child to the hospital through the wall’s checkpoint because she couldn’t take a vehicle through it. Her 2 yr. old whom she carried had both legs in heavy casts.
Mr. Trump gloats over the prospect of running a Wall along the whole border of Mexico The U.S. Post estimates the cost would double the amount Mr. Trump puts out. Mr. Trump also “surprisingly” fails to mention the people who will be affected by the wall on the Mexican or American side. In light of their rights, it is truly unmitigated nationalism—only the U.S.’s interests—which appear to count in decision makig. AMERICAN jobs, “safety”, all come first. Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) has this to say: ”When you live here and you know how interconnected we are and you know friends, or have family on both sides of the border, it seems ridiculous at best and, at worst, it (this proposed wall) seems like something that is shameful and embarrassing.”
About 72 percent of people living on the U.S. side of the border and 86 percent of people living on the Mexican side are opposed to building a wall, reports a poll taken by Cronkite News, Univision News, and Dallas Morning News. Another 69 percent of Mexicans and 79 percent of Americans said that they depend on the other country for economic survival. I try to understand Trump’s supporters’ hard views on this topic. However, a blanket support of the WALL feels callous and criminal to me, not thought through in all its implications. Newsweek called the whole idea of the Wall: “Impractical, Impolitic, Impossible.” Clearly, there is more than someone and “something that does not love a wall.”
Project Peace 