Naim Ateek describes the ravaging effects of Israel's "Iron Wall" strategy on the West Bank and Gaza

Jerry Levin
EPF & Friends of Sabeel North America

(Atlanta, GA July 17, 2001) Internationally known Palestinian peacemaker, Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, President-Founder of Jerusalem based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center described the increasingly grim violent effects of the uprising in the occupied territories against Israel’s unwavering and intensifying decades long "iron wall" policy and strategy. The iron wall was designed, he said, to insure that Palestinians "will be powerless to break out. [Israel] wants the Palestinians to succumb, to accept that they can't achieve independence, achieve liberation; that their only chance is to live under Israeli domination."

But that, he explained, Palestinians "are not willing to do."

The author of Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, speaking Tuesday evening at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in an Atlanta, Georgia suburb reported that in the last nine months Palestine's refusal to submit to Israel's increasingly brutal and confiscatory military rule has resulted in "over 550 people killed: 31 percent under the age of 18; more than 16,000 Palestinians injured and wounded; at least 72 journalists shot and beaten by Israeli soldiers or by settlers; 6 shelters shelled; more than 4,000 buildings shelled; more than 350 homes completely demolished; 30 mosques, 12 churches, and 30 schools shelled; 42 Palestinian students killed on their way home; 25,000 olive trees and fruit trees uprooted; unemployment rate 48%; a 12% drop in the Gross National Product; and 1.3 million Palestinians (50% of all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza) living at the poverty level."

But despite those "iron wall" statistics, he maintained, "Palestinians are not going to give up."

Ateek told his audience composed of Muslim and Christians of Middle Eastern heritage, and main stream Christian, and Jews who oppose Israeli colonialism and militarism that the problem for Palestinians with Israel's iron wall approach is that "it won't go away" and, in fact, "continues to expand" in four significant ways:

  1. Zionism's continued use of the Holocaust has created a conceptual "iron wall that Palestinians cannot penetrate." "Too many in the world," he said, still "see the Jewish people in Israel as the oppressed not as the oppressor."

  2. "AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is symptomoatic of a very strong wall," which at this point is still "indestructible." AIPAC is just one arm, he said, of what has become to be known as the powerful Jewish or Israel lobby, which has been powerfully influential in American politics. As an example of how the lobby operates, he quoted one of the few members of congress who has been able to resist the power of the lobby's purse. He read from a recent talk by Congresswoman Carolyn McKinney (D-GA, 4th district) to an American Arab organization during which she described one Jewish funding group's attempt to co-opt her vote through potential financial support. "I wanted to have an event and I had been [told] that if I didn't sign a pledge supporting the military superiority of Israel and Jerusalem as the capital city, that no support would come my way. And sure enough, I didn't sign the pledge and no support came my way."

  3. Official U. S. aid to Israel, he detailed, has amounted over the decades conservatively to "$85 billion dollars." But if one calculates how much it has cost the United States "to borrow money to give Israel that much money, it really amounts to $195 billion" and neither of those figures reflects "private donations that come from individuals."

  4. "Christian Zionism," he said, "is another serious issue. "Christian Zionists are giving more [money to Israel] than American Jews." Nevertheless, he was able to report that during his current public talks in the South he has detected "positive change… I don't find opposition any more from the [main line] grassroots…Nowadays I only find sympathetic audiences. People more and more know that there is historic injustice being done against the Palestinians."

    Nevertheless, he emphasized that despite the affirming stirrings in the main line church community, "Christian Zionism still remains an iron wall." But even where Christian Zionism is concerned, he confessed to his Georgia audience that he was "totally shocked" at the warm reception he received the week before in Birmingham Alabama. "Right here in the Bible Belt," he said, "I started talking about the heresy of Christian Zionism, and I thought 'people are going to standup and attack me.' [But] I was totally surprised that many people were very sympathetic. So now my feeling is that there is a hunger right here in the South for some of us to come here and talk about Biblical interpretation, and how much the Bible has been abused and used against the Palestinian people."

Then he turned to the theme of Justice. "What do I mean by Justice?" he asked rhetorically. First, he said, "Justice is connected with peace. There is no peace without justice. [So] justice is connected with security; [but] there is no security for Israel, if there is no justice for Palestinians."

By not demanding "absolute justice," he said, Palestinians are making a significant concession. They are seeking only "justice connected with mercy." For most Palestinians, he asserted, it means that they do not "seek destruction of the state of Israel and 100% of the land. They are only seeking the approximately 22% of the land that was in Arab control until the 1967 war: the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem."

"That is what we are asking for, but Israel is saying, 'no,'" Restoring that 22% of the land to the Palestinian people, he assured, will go far in raising the "basic human dignity of the Palestinians damaged by the occupation." "Unless there is a way that we can crack the iron wall, that we can apply an ax to the iron wall of Israeli domination," he concluded, "I am afraid that many of our people are going to suffer for many more years."

Additional Releases:

North Central Alabama Episcopal Peace Fellowship
and
Friends of Sabeel North America
2455-E Arlington Crescent, Birmingham, AL 35205
Phone/Fax: 205 933 8007
Email: jlevin0320@aol.com