The work continues now from early morning to late evening.
Sharon talks about the roadmap while creating "facts on the ground."
But this wall also has a deeper meaning. It is no accident that it is so hugely popular in Israel, from Sharon to Mitzna and Beilin. It satisfies an inner need.
In his book Der Judenstaat, (1896) the founding document of Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote the following sentences: "For Europe, we shall be there (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia. We shall do pioneer service for culture against barbarism."
This idea, that we are the outpost of Europe and need a high wall between us and Asiatic barbarism-i.e. the Arabs-is thus embedded in the original vision. Perhaps it has even deeper roots. When the Jews began to congregate in ghettos, before this was decreed from the outside, they surrounded themselves with a wall, in order to separate themselves from a hostile environment. Wall and separation, as guarantees of security, are deeply imprinted in the Jewish collective unconscious.
But we, the new Hebrew society in this country, did not want to be a new Jewish ghetto. We did not seek separation, but the opposite-to be open to the region. Not "a villa in the jungle," as Ehud Barak put it, not a European outpost against Asiatic barbarism, as seen by Herzl, but an open society that lives in peace and prospers in partnership with the nations of this region.
This evil wall is not only an instrument for dispossessing the Palestinians, not only an instrument of terrorism masquerading as a defense against terrorism, not only an instrument of the settlers disguised as a security measure. It is, most of all, an obstacle facing Israel, a wall blocking our way to a future of peace, security, and prosperity.
Not all the issues comprise facts on the ground; some of the issues are facts of the person: imprisonment, assassination, and exile.-SRP
April 14, 2007
At this moment, negotiations on a prisoner exchange are in full swing.40 The term "negotiations" is really inappropriate. "Haggling" seems more fitting. One could also use an uglier expression: "trafficking in human beings."
The planned deal concerns living people. They are being treated like goods, for which the officials of the two sides are bargaining as if they were a piece of land or a load of fruit.