The victims of the 'Je suis Charlie' era

In a world where the people of an entire nation are being killed and the sons of other nations are leaving their countries that have been divided into small colonies by barriers and walls – the perpetrators of such crimes continue to be ignored. In a world where a Palestinian minister dies as he is standing next to a wall that has been imposed on him by an occupying force, in front of cameras no less – the world turns a blind eye to this injustice and is quick to hear the sirens blasting in Paris as it hurries to declare that it, too, is “Charlie”. Similarly, many world leaders rushed to Berlin to celebrate the fall of the wall 25 years ago, where they all remembered the victims of the wall; but none declared that they were all “victims of a separation barrier”.

Just as the victims of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper lost their lives to provoked terrorists, so the people of Germany also fell victim to a war that was started by their own country and would later move on to affect the entire world. And yet, the world’s solidarity with the Charlie Hebdo attacks seems to have carried more weight than the entire duration of Berlin’s partition until the fall of the wall in November 1989. Media outlets in the west and in the rest of the world often portrayed the Berlin wall as a symbol of Soviet totalitarianism and treated it as evidence that the enemies on the Eastern side of the cities practiced monstrous ways. The world was very much divided in the same way as Berlin, with the East representing socialism and the West representing capitalism. In truth, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the apartheid wall does not hold any meaning except to confirm that this type of remembrance is purely symbolic, and that people are still suffering from partition, even today.

By celebrating the fall of the Berlin wall to this degree, the world has tried to cover up its wilful ignorance of the existence of another wall: the one that Israel has built to partition and divide the West Bank – a wall that is deeply rooted in the ground and is tall enough to force everyone to look at it. It is a force to be reckoned with. This wall was designed to separate Palestine’s cities from its towns and its family members from each another. It prevents the employee from reaching his workplace and the farmer from getting to his land. It was designed to keep the people from gaining access to agrarian lands and water sources. The world’s memory of the Berlin wall and its fall has been the focal point of obsession in recent years, and it is the international community’s hypocritical willingness to ignore the wall in Palestine that has allowed it to not only remain standing but to actually gain ground.

Despite all the progress that has been made by the global media, the world has not given much thought to the separation barrier in the West Bank – which has often been compared to the Berlin wall. And yet, if one were truly to compare the two walls, one would see that if they were placed side by side the Berlin wall would appear as insignificant as a child’s toy. The length of the Berlin wall was 155 kilometres; the length of the apartheid wall in Palestine is around 770 kilometres. In most locations, the wall in Palestine is over 80 metres high and 60 metres wide and is often accompanied by barbed wire. While the Berlin wall separated Germany into two different countries, the barrier in the West Bank separates the West Bank into three separate territories; it is otherwise difficult to make a comparison between the two infamous walls.

Unlike the Berlin wall that was implemented by a country on its own territory, the apartheid wall that Israel has built in occupied Palestine is illegal under international law. Because Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinian territories, the separation wall is a clear violation of article 46, which states that is prohibited to transfer populations in an occupied territory or to force them to live under conditions that would make moving the only option. Moreover, the apartheid wall was designed with the intention of protecting settlers living in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.

In today’s reality, people still flock towards the Berlin wall as if in a form of pilgrimage. They imagine illusions and mirages as they picture the people who died trying to get to the other side and they place flower petals in the places where blood was spilt in an effort to remind the human race of its humanity. People today want to stand on the ruins of soviet brutality as they wonder: how could such a wall have been built? How is it possible that a wall was erected in city and divided neighbourhoods until it became two separate places? How could people have allowed entire families to be separated in this way? People look to the Berlin wall and see brutality and barbarity. Since then, it has been the focus of many poets and writers as well as academics. But where are the poems and the novels that speak of the wall in Palestine? Why is there not a delegation celebrating the fall of this disgusting wall, which causes old Palestinian men to cry for not being able to embrace and tend to their olive trees? We live in a world where all of our attention is focused on celebrating the Berlin wall’s anniversary and regretting Charlie Hebdo, rather than focusing on Palestine.

Translated from Al-Araby Al-Jadid, 2 February, 2015

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.