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<!-[endif]-> | <!-[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]-><!-[if !vml]-> <!-[endif]-> | Twenty-five feet high, punctuated by giant "sniper" towers, and entrapping Qalqiliya on three sides, the wall is a brazen attack on what is vital to life in a dry environment – water. In villages around Qalqiliya and nearby Tulkarem over 30 Palestinian wells have been lost due to the construction of the wall. This may not sound like many wells, but since Israeli law prevents Palestinians from drilling any new wells, this means no water for drinking, for agriculture, for life. (6) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> Even more ominous is the attack this represents on one of the most important water resources in Palestine, what Palestinians call the Western Aquifer and Israelis call the Mountain Aquifer. This aquifer is, after the Jordan River, the largest source of water in historic Palestine. (7) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> Used as Americans are to plentiful rainfall and aboveground water supply reservoirs, the word 'aquifer' is foreign to many of us. But in a land of low rainfall, an aquifer, which is an underground reservoir of water, is the key to agriculture and life. | <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> Not only has Qalqiliya been cut off from the Western Aquifer, but also the town has been severed from the rich farmlands that used to make Qalqiliya prosperous. Fifty-five percent of Qalqiliya's farmland is now on the other side of the Apartheid Wall. (9) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> | <!-[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]-><!-[if !vml]-> <!-[endif]-> | Prevent the residents of Qalqiliya from being able to water and tend their groves of olive trees and citrus trees and you cut a livelihood – and a people – off at the knees. <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> This was the town that, formerly, exported its fruits and vegetables to Israel and the Gulf. This is the town that used to be wealthy – at least, by Palestinian standards. Income is now averaging $60.00 a month instead of the pre-Wall $1000 a month. (10) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> What else has the wall done to Qalqiliya? We could try to pin down the disaster in more facts and figures: <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> Six hundred shops and businesses out of a total | <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> of 1800 have been closed. (11) Unemployment has reached 80%. (12) And, according to the city's mayor, since the concrete cage was constructed, 20 % of the residents have been forced to leave in what some bitterly call "voluntary transfer." (13) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]-><!-[if !vml]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> Numbers and words walking across the page can only faintly trace the horror. As one resident says: "It is always there, me and my family no longer see the sky, nor the sunset, nothing but a ten-meter-high concrete wall." (14) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> The Wall at Qalqiliya. It's an atrocity.
wall of pain, wall of the horror, wall of the separation, dark wall, wall of the wall suffering wall. For where we go with more walls in this life? feelings and places can be separate? or they had never been the same places? ahuebrazil.wordpress.com/.../  - Peace activists scale separation wall. Palestine/Israel, August 2004
EAPPI photo/Martin Smedjeback
"The separation fence is marketed to the Israeli public as a reasonable security measure meant to separate Palestinians from Israelis; in reality, the only separation it offers is between Palestinians and their land." [20]  www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/DeRooij02.htm | | An Israeli settlement visible in the background, the path shorn through the West Bank for the Wall has resulted in the demolition of hundreds of Palestinian homes and the separation of Palestinians from their agricultural land and only means of livelihood. (PENGON/Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign) | <!-[endif]-> This is not a fence. This is an immense, sky-obliterating, concrete edifice that belittles the walls at Sing-Sing prison. <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]-><!-[if !vml]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]-> <!-[endif]-> This is not a fence. This is an act of war. Described as a security, anti-terrorist fence by the Israelis, the wall is redrawing the boundary between Israel and Palestine. Gone is the Green Line (the boundaries established after the 1967 war), arrived is the boundaries of the Apartheid Wall. In the first phase alone, the wall will confiscate 160,000-180,000 dunums or 40,000-45,000 acres of Palestinian land in the West Bank and much of this acreage is prime agricultural land. (5) <!-[if !supportEmptyParas]->
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