Summary
The barrier of concrete and steel Israel began building in the West Bank, which Makdisi — adopting the International Court of Justice’s terminology — calls the wall: built mostly inside the occupied territory rather than on the 1949 Armistice Line, and treated in the book as an effect, not a cause, of the occupation’s fragmentation of Palestinian space since 1967 (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.55-56, p.70).
Details
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“For most of its length, the wall is built not on the border, the 1949 Armistice Line that had until 1967 separated Israel from the West Bank, but rather inside—often miles inside, and in certain places almost halfway into—the occupied territory itself” (PDF p.56).
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“the fracturing and division of Palestinian territory—which is the defining feature of the wall—is a long-standing feature of the Israeli occupation going back to 1967, rather than an innovation introduced with the wall itself” (PDF p.70).
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For Vladimir Jabotinsky in 1923 the iron wall was a metaphor; Makdisi writes that Israel has built actual iron walls (PDF p.53).
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Around East Jerusalem the wall runs 168 kilometres with only twelve gates, four of them theoretically available to West Bank residents; some 60,000 Palestinians, mostly Jerusalem residency holders, pass daily (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.114).
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U.N. report, July 2007, as quoted by Makdisi: the wall has cut off a quarter of Jerusalem’s Palestinian population from the city, encircling the settlements of Givat Ze’ev (pop. 11,000) and Ma’ale Adumim (pop. 28,000) while excluding Shu’fat Camp, Kafr Aqab and Samiramees (over 30,000) and running through the middle of Abu Dis (PDF p.116).
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The wall hardened the 1967 Jerusalem boundary lines: Palestinians outside the city became liable to lose land inside it under the Absentee Property Law, “absent” only because the wall stands between them and their land (PDF p.113-114).
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Seam zone, Closure system, International Court of Justice