Wall adds security, builds enmity

Some sleeping easier, others see land grab at work

By Uli Schmetzer, Special to the Tribune

Wall adds security, builds enmity — Chicago Tribune, 1 August 2003 — Chicago Tribune · Chicago, IL · 1 August 2003

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Transcribed from the clipping

UM AL-FAHM, Israel — The day soldiers put down the stakes for the new Israeli security barrier on the hill behind his house, Ahmed Yussef Jabarin realized he was about to be zoned out of Israel and into the West Bank. Jabarin, 67, a farmer, is one of Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens. Like most Israeli Arabs, he grumbles about being treated like a second-class Israeli.

But he had no intention of joining his fellow Palestinians on their side of the controversial new divide, a wall and fence already snaking 90 miles down the northern part of the West Bank. The barrier has drawn fierce criticism because much of it is to be built inside the West Bank, creating a new de facto border that carves away Palestinian territory.

In Jabarin’s case, however, the opposite was proposed. Planners were willing to give up Israeli territory to locate the fence on the hill, providing a better vantage point. “Listen, I’m an Israeli,” he said. “Why should they kick me out? Because I’m an Arab they tried to make me into a Palestinian. It would have killed me. There is no work, no money over there.”

So he protested. His cousin Rafiq Jabarin, a lawyer, took up the case. The municipality of Um Al-Fahm, a town of 37,000 Israeli Arabs on the Green Line dividing Israel and the West Bank, joined in the protest, enraged by the prospect of losing 3 million square feet of land to the Palestinian side if the fence had run its planned course.

How this transcription was made

Date confirmed on the page (folio-verified for the date, byline-consistent for the paper (the section folio reads “WORLD” at the left and “FRIDAY AUGUST 1, 2003” at the right; 1 August 2003 was a Friday. The ). Adjudicated confirmed against the printed page: Section folio across the top: 'WORLD' at the left, 'FRIDAY AUGUST 1, 2003' at the right. 1 August 2003 was a Friday. The paper's own name is NOT in the folio; what is printed is the byline 'By Uli Sch.

Context added by this archive

The Tribune also prints, in its own voice, “Palestinians dub the new West Bank barrier the ‘Wall of Shame’ or the ‘Apartheid Wall.’ Israelis call it a ‘security fence.’” — an explicit, symmetrical statement that the two sides have different names for the same object, printed on a page whose own people-naming is anything but symmetrical.

Cite this clipping

"Wall adds security, builds enmity," Chicago Tribune, 1 August 2003. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2003-033. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2003-033