11 November 2009

Commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall

Of all the activities to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, this one seems the most appropriate.

Palestinians tear down chunk of wall - Yahoo! News:
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – Palestinians tore down a chunk of Israel's West Bank separation barrier on Monday in a protest staged to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down.

A truck was used to pull down the wall section to the cheers of an estimated 150 Palestinian activists and foreign supporters near the Qalandia refugee camp just outside Ramallah.

Israeli troops used teargas and stun grenades in a brief clash with stone-throwing Palestinians who then dispersed.

'Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and marks the first day of a week of resistance to the apartheid wall in Palestine and around the globe,' the Stop the Wall campaign said in a statement.

And if all the speeches abouty what a good thing it was that the old one fell were applied to the new on that has arisen in the mean time, they might be less of a waste of breath.

5 comments:

real estate Vancouver BC said...

It's sad that something like Berlin wall still exists nowadays. I believe that every kind of wall separating people makes nothing good. However, the situation in Berlin was different than the situation in the Middle East. I remember the day when Berlin wall fell. I was sitting in front of TV here in Vancouver and couldn't believe what's happening. The atmosphere among people was great, full of hope and joy. I wish that one day it will be similar with Israel and Palestine.

Best regards,
Jay

Anonymous said...

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/bluecanary/2009/11/there-is-another-wall-twice-as.php?ref=reccafe

Steve Hayes said...

Yes, the Israel-Palestine wall is about as "necessary" as the Berlin one, and the mentality of the politicians who had it erected is pretty similar.

Ploni Almoni said...

I think it was erected with the intent to provide "security", which is a very different reason than the Berlin wall. However, I agree that the wall should come down, but I have a rather unique perspective on things, one ironically I share with some non-seperatist Arab parties in the Keneset rather than any mainsteam party in the "Jewish state". I think a division of Israel into two states, Jew and Arab, is doomed to fail and is an unnatural state of affairs. The Arab territories, as the wall demonstrates, become poverty-stricken when they are seperate entitites from the Jewish territories. I think there should be one state, both Jew and Arab, with no "occupied territories". All of the territories should be annexed, and Arabs and Jews there should be allowed to vote in national elections rather than just for local and PA entity governments. In other words, I'm in favor of the one-state solution favored by many Arab parties in the Kenesset, rather than the two state solution the Palestinian Authority, Likkud, and Kadima, keep talking about. There are a quarter of a million Jews in the "territories" that contain less than 2 million people, and over 2 million Arabs in the Jewish state. A division is doomed to failure, and is continuing to fail due to the presense of both Arabs and Jews in each other's territories. Why can't we just get along, in one Democratic bi-ethnic state? If the Arabs have a birthrate that makes them outnumber the Jews a hundred years from now or whatever, so be it.

Ploni Almoni said...

Oops, forgot Gaza, add another million or two to the rough occupied territory figure. Gaza being separate from Israel demonstrates that Palestine cannot exist as an independent economic entity without people coming to work in both places and freely traveling.

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