Since 1948, Qalqiliya has been systematically targeted by consecutive Israeli governments for either demolition or evacuation because of the city’s strategic location. Zionist ideology and measures reveal that the location of the city is a permanent target of Israel due to two main reasons. First, its location, which was determined in the 1948 war due to the courageous resistance of the residents which ultimately determined the boundary of the Jewish State, and which invokes extreme irritation within Israel. Located in the center of Israel, near the most densely populated Jewish areas that include Tel Aviv and its suburbs, Petah Tikva, Kafr Saba, and Ra’anana, Qalqiliya is considered a weak point by the State. The width of Israel from the city’s current location to the Mediterranean is some 14 kilometers.

Second, water, since Qalqiliya is located in the most important and water-rich area in Palestine, atop the Western Aquifer, known as the Al ’Oja Aquifer, whose area reaches some 1,795 square kilometers. Most of the area of this aquifer is located within the West Bank, with a simple stretch inside the Green Line. Israel depends upon the stealing of water from this aquifer to cover between 20-25% of its annual hydraulic needs.

The Occupation authorities have prevented Palestinians from using their own water resources by preventing the drilling of new wells or the drilling current wells to greater depth. Water extraction for each well is also specified by Israel, while simultaneously Israel drilled 7 new, deep wells on the Israeli side surrounding Qalqiliya which pump massive quantities of water, some 3,000 cubic meters. Contrary to the Israeli wells, Qalqiliya’s wells, drilled before 1967, are shallow (between 30-70 meters). Based upon the abovementioned information, the hydraulic importance of Qalqiliya is clear as it is an important strategic site for both the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

Therefore, continued plans and schemes were designed to control Qalqiliya and displace its residents since 1948 and until today. Israeli attempts to dominate the city are highlighted and summarized in the following four points:

The Jordanian and Israeli governments signed their second cease-fire agreement that became a permanent agreement, known as the Rhodes Agreement. According to this agreement, 400,000 dunums of the Triangle lands, between six villages surrounding Qalqiliya, were handed over to Israel; 40,000 dunums of this were the lands, farms and orchards of Qalqiliya and demarcated the “new” border adjacent to houses located in the city’s outskirts. These lands included 10,000 dunums of orchards that formed the main source of sustenance and livelihoods of the community.

The demarcation of the new border conveyed a clear and direct message to the residents of the city, which was to emigrate and look for new sources of income in other places. The response of the residents came in the form of defiance; the community immediately began working on the surrounding mountains, clearing the lands for farming and drilling 39 artesian wells. The surrounding areas became, after a few years, a stable source of income for the residents, which Israel responded to by suppressing the farmers and the community during a period of 26 months when some 624 Israeli military assaults in the area were counted, and which included ten martyrs.

The Israeli army began attacking the city to destroy it on June 8, 1967 by an order from General Uzi Narkis. All the residents were expelled on June 7, 1967 during a massive attack from the air and land, mobilizing various units of the Israeli army and causing virtual total destruction of the city.

On June 28, 1967 Qalqiliya’s residents were able to return to their destroyed city following the help of the representatives of the five permanent member states in the Security Council. Placing tents in front of their destroyed homes, the city was rebuilt by its residents, needing two years to bring it back to life.

This plan is based on the implementation of a number of programs that Israel began executing from 1981 until 2003 with the aim of totally isolating Qalqiliya and practicing extreme psychological and economic pressures including the forcible reduction of the income sources of the inhabitants.

The Settlement Plans: Aimed at drowning Qalqiliya and the surrounding villages in a sea of settlement blocks and cantons in which Qalqiliya will appear as a small, isolated island. As Minister of Housing in 1981, Ariel Sharon adopted a plan he named “The Seven Stars” which aimed at establishing seven large settlements on the Green Line that would surround Qalqiliya for the purpose of eradicating the Green Line as a political boundary, which would then no longer be negotiable in any final agreement.

Despite the attempts at confidentiality by Israel on settlement data, the outcome of the settlement activities in Qalqiliya and the district is serious, where there are 25 Jewish settlements in the district total 53,790 settlers who total 27% of the West Bank settlers, minus Jerusalem. The numbers highlight that Qalqiliya and Jerusalem are top targets for Israeli settlements and their expansion.

The Military Enclosure: Nine military positions were erected on all sides of the city.

Inflicting Economic and Psychological Suppression: Israel has taken advantage of the Al Aqsa intifada and, under the pretext of “security,” has undertaken a number of daily measures that negatively affect the sources of living of the inhabitants, causing legitimate existential fears among the entire community. Various practices have turned into government policy in the past two and a half years, whereby people are facing, in multiple ways, virtual to total losses of income. For just one example, the total losses per farmer throughout the Intifada have reached $4,160, translating into complete bankruptcy.

This cage has one entrance and exit which the inhabitants can only use under the supervision and control of the Israeli military and within specified hours. This entrance/exit is located in the eastern entrance of the city. The military issued 6 military orders that show the path of the Wall around the city. The Apartheid Wall extends the length of 13,606 meters and its width ranges between 53 to 104 meters. The Wall has eaten a total of 2,200 dunums of orchards and irrigated lands that were owned by 543 farmers.

•Controlling water resources by isolating 18 wells whose total annual extraction is 1,888,700 million cubic meters that irrigate 3,747 dunums of land owned by 612 farmers.

•Destroying the modern irrigating network.

•Isolating 3,750 dunums of irrigated lands located inside (“behind” the Wall) in a “closed military zone” that can not be entered without a military permit.

•Fragmenting the ownership of 342 agricultural lands whose area spread over 2,150 dunums and the Wall will cut through this region. These lands are owned by 547 farmers.

•Destroying all agricultural roads and removing the boundaries of the agricultural properties in a way that demands new survey and a new sorting as well as determining the alternative agricultural paths.

•Restricting the movement of the inhabitants and isolating Qalqiliya completely from the rest of the Palestinian cities and villages, as well as placing the residents in a closed military zone around the clock.

This is one of the racist forms of discrimination forms that is typical and deep-rooted in Israeli practices and which violates the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), the International Criminal Court (1998), and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1973).

In order to appreciate the full negative impact and destructive implications of the Apartheid Wall currently constructed by the Israeli occupation authorities and designated to extend the full length of the West Bank (some 350 km) it is necessary to consider the Apartheid Wall in its historical context. First, in the context of the history of the mainstream ideology informing past and current Israeli policies, namely, political Zionism, an ideology predicated upon the distinction between “Jew and “non-Jew,” and committed to a settler-colonial political program. Second, in the context of the legal underpinnings of the “two-state solution,” notably in the context of such UN General Assembly and Security Council, resolutions as are relevant to the question of Palestine.

The political Zionist school of thought and practice, encompassing all political Zionist parties, is committed to the political statement that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign state, a Jewish state, the State of Israel, that attempts to guarantee in law (e.g., Absentees Property Law of 1950) and in practice (e.g., the mass expulsion, under the cover of the 1948-49 war, of the native indigenous Palestinian Arab people) a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes (a demographic majority of ethnic Jews) in the territories under its control. Individuals and organizations who believe the above to be a bad idea, a war criminal proposition and an apartheid political program, would be opposed to political Zionism. They would be anti-Zionist (and in no way anti-Jewish) in the same sense that democratic individuals and organizations opposed to apartheid in South Africa have been anti-apartheid (and in no way anti- White).

The debate among the various political Zionist parties primarily concerns differences in prioritizing the means most adequate for the implementation of the allegedly “good idea” above, and the extent of the territorial expansion which can realistically be expected in given circumstances to remain effectively under Israeli control.

The Apartheid Wall currently under construction is being set up in the context of the above debate with the view to further segregate the indigenous Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank from Israel in what amounts to walled, fenced and tightly controlled mass concentration areas under the ultimate dominion of the Israeli occupation authorities; a manner similar to the segregation of the Palestinian Arab population of the Gaza Strip, security gates, magnetic cards and all. In this way an infrastructure is put in place for the consolidation of a Palestinian bantustan under apartheid Israel control, or, in certain circumstances, the orchestration of the mass expulsion of the captive indigenous Palestinian Arab population - the so-called “transfer.” Needless to say that both options represent war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law.

The reference to the Wall as an Apartheid Wall is accurate and correct, in that it is put there by a government, the Government of the State of Israel, which is informed by apartheid values of segregation and separation known as political Zionism, regulated by Acts of Parliament (the Knesset) and enforced by law enforcement instruments (the courts, the army, the police and the prison system.) Racism is not apartheid and apartheid is not racism. Apartheid is a political system where racism is regulated in law through Acts of Parliament. Racism is regrettably prevalent in all states, including liberal democratic states such as the current western liberal democracies. But in liberal democratic states, those victimized by racism have legal recourse to seek the protection of the law under a democratic Constitution, namely a Constitution that embodies the values of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights. In an apartheid state, on the other hand, the state enforces racism through the legal system, criminalizes expressions of humanitarian concern and obligates the citizenry through Acts of Parliament to make racist choices and conform to racist behavior. The Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) has, since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, put in place a series of strategic legislation, beginning with incorporation of the British Mandate Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945 into the corpus of Israeli law and the promulgation of the Absentees’ Property Law of 1950, aiming, in the first instance, to dispossess the indigenous native people of Palestine, the Palestinian Arab people, and obligating the Government to apply the force of the law in order to advance segregationist policies in the territories under its control both by belligerent occupation and by enforcing racialist choice based on the distinction between “Jew” and “non-Jew” upon the citizens of the Jewish State.

As noted above, Israeli apartheid is informed by the ideology of political Zionism, predicated on the distinction between “Jew” and “non-Jew” and committed to a settler-colonial political program. Political Zionism, founded at the First Zionist Congress convened in Basel in August 1897, is the dominant and hegemonic mainstream school within the World Zionist Organization (WZO).

The first political program of the World Zionist Organization, known as the “Basel Program,” was formulated at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 as follows:

Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.

The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end:

1. The promotion by appropriate means of the settlement in Palestine of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers;

2. The organization and uniting of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, both local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country;

3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish natio4. Preparatory steps toward obtaining the consent of governments, where necessary, in order to reach the goal of Zionism.

It has since been revised a number of times, the latest following the 1967 war by the 27th Zionist Congress in 1968, and subsequently by the Zionist General Council in 1991. The current program is known as the Revised Jerusalem Program. It reads as follows:

The introduction of this key distinction of “Jew” versus “non-Jew,” into the foundation of Israeli law is, however, accomplished as part of a two-tier structure. It is this two-tier structure, which has preserved the face of ambiguity over Israeli apartheid legislation for over a half of a century2. The first tier, the level at which the key distinction between “Jew” and “non-Jew” is rendered openly and explicitly, is in the Constitutions and Articles of Association of all the institutions of the Zionist movement and, in the first instance, the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel (JA), and the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Thus, the Constitution of the Jewish Agency stipulates: