As An Apartheid Wall, I Thought I’d Be Part Of Actual Apartheid

By Israel’s security barrier

It gets a little frustrating when you’re assigned a certain role, given a certain job description, and then don’t get a chance to perform that job. I’m sure you can understand how I feel after years of carrying the job title “Apartheid Wall” but coming nowhere close to enforcing bona fide racial segregation and disenfranchisement.

According to so many important voices out there, Israel is using me to isolate, oppress, and deny basic rights to millions of Palestinians, but let me tell you, I have precious little to do with all that. For one thing, Palestinians face more oppression and rights violations from their own leadership than from anything Israel ever did to them. For another, once the self-rule agreement between the parties went into effect in 1993, it’s not Israel’s job anymore to govern those areas. That’s what “self-rule” is supposed to mean. If you’re going to use terms, use them right – and if you’re going to call me an Apartheid Wall, then God damn it, show me some Apartheid.

What’s more, race apparently has nothing to do with it. You’ve got millions of Arabs who hold Israeli citizenship on the side of me that’s supposed to be “clean” of Palestinians, but they’re ethnically and racially identical to the Palestinians on my other side. If this is Apartheid, I’m doing a piss-poor job of it. I’m not even being given the opportunity to show I can do it properly, and that’s the most frustrating thing, because I know if given the chance, I could excel at it.

I’m not even a proper wall! Parts of me might be, in places where gunfire, firebombs, and other projectiles are more frequently aimed at Israelis, but for the majority of my length, I’m a fence, some coils of barbed wire, or other obstacle – that is, where I even exist. For all that Israeli security officials tout my effectiveness, I haven’t even been completed along my entire planned length as a series of fences, let alone a wall. This is not what I’m supposed to be if I’m going to live up to my name.

Fate has apparently decided not to have me constructed where actual Apartheid is going on; cruel fate apparently believes other walls can serve in Palestinian “refugee” camps in Lebanon, where genuine, documented Apartheid is practiced. It’s just not fair.

And nobody even cares. That’s the worst part.

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