Wall separating Israelis, Palestinians illegal, says speaker

Intermountain Catholic

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Dr. Norman Finkelstein, a member of the faculty of DePaul University and an expert on the politics of the Israel/Palestine conflict, speaks April 18 at the University of Utah. ?The fair and just resolution to this crisis is of great importance to bringing peace to the Middle East,? said Bill Melville of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. ?It is especially important to members of the Christian Community.? IC photo by Barbara S. Lee

SALT LAKE CITY — Dr. Norman Finkelstein is not afraid of controversy. In fact, this Jewish son of Holocaust survivors, a professor of political science at DePaul University in Chicago, has placed himself right in the middle of one of the most divisive issues of the day – the wall the Israeli government is building to progressively isolate the Palestinian population from their homes, their farmlands, and their families.

Dr. Finkelstein, speaking at the University of Utah April 18 as a guest of Utahns for a Just Peace in the Holy Land, said Former President Jimmy Carter is "becoming a martyr for the cause" with all of the controversy that has come to him since the publication of his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," in which he claims the United States and Israel stand alone in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.

"The preponderance of controversy over that book is largely fabricated," Dr. Finkelstein said. "It is contrived to divert attention from the real issues and to sow confusion about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

"There is no doubt in my mind that Carter is right when he calls that wall ‘an imprisonment wall.’ I would draw your attention to chapter 16 of his book, where he refers to the wall as a prison."

Finkelstein said the building of the wall, 36 feet high in some areas and lined and topped with razor wire, was brought before the World Court in 2004. That court determined that the building of the wall was illegal. The Israeli response has been that all fundamental questions of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and efforts as a peace process are, "too intricate to take up."

"It isn’t all that profound," Dr. Finkelstein said. "The question is, where should the border be? It shouldn’t be on Palestinian land, where the wall is being built."

Dr. Finkelstein said the legal status of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip, with their 460,000 settlers who live there is the second question to be settled in any peace process. Citing Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions, Dr. Finkelstein said it is illegal for an occupying power to transport their population into an occupied country to take up residence.

A third question to be settled, he said, is the legal status of East Jerusalem, conquered in June, 1967, by Israel. Dr. Finkelstein said the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, should be vacated by the Israelis. "Every aspect of the decision to occupy East Jerusalem, long considered ‘the eternal and undivided capital of Palestine," is wrong. It’s absolutely uncontroversial."

The fourth question to be settled, Dr. Finkelstein said, is the status of Palestinian refugees, whose numbers are growing with the construction of the wall, as they try to find safer places to build their homes, raise their children, and lead a normal life.

"What is happening to the Palestinians now is little more than an ethnic cleansing," Dr. Finkelstein said. "This is more than an Israeli/Palestinian issue. It’s a human rights issue.

The situation in the occupied Palestinian territories is difficult for human rights organizations and aid organization to monitor, he said, because while the areas are heavily monitored by many organizations, human rights laws are relatively new, and there are many gray, undefined areas; each of the organizations monitoring the situation has their own legal interpretations of the law; and human rights monitoring is susceptible to human error.

"Are Palestinian children throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, or are they firing live ammunition? Are Palestinians creating a disturbance on the periphery or in the heart of a crowd? Did that Palestinian man fire a warning shot, or did he feel his life was threatened? All of these issues are open to interpretation and are subject to the fallibility and the frailty of human memory," he said.

Dr. Finkelstein said the American press, for a large part, has bought into the Israeli/American interpretation of the conflict, and does not seem to be interested in examining the large contradictions between what they are being told and what is really happening.

Dr. Finkelstein has studied the conflict for the past 15 years. His findings and his outspokenness have resulted in his having to leave one university after another. Still, he continues to state the facts as he sees them.

"Recently, the election of Hamas by Palestinians for their representatives resulted in brutal punishment by the Israelis, backed by the United States. "Under international law, terrorism is illegal as a political tactic. One of the most basic principles of international law is that of reciprocity. The United States should be treating both sides equally."