New Photos Show the Security Infrastructure of the Palestinian Occupation
Brian Katulis's 17 photos depict the "facts on the ground" of occupation, such as this Bethlehem house surrounded by the Israeli security wall.
To show both the need and complexity of recommencing the peace process in Israel and Palestine, Middle East expert Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress has put together a slideshow of 17 photographs that is both stunningly illustrative and quite sad. See it here: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/06/israel_slideshow.html
Looking at the roads, tunnels, wall, barbed wire, metal checkpoints, and illegally-built apartment blocks for half a million settlers, one can’t help but imagine what might have been accomplished if the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on occupation had gone into: guarding the West Bank with a permanent U.N. peacekeeping force instead of conscripted Israeli teenagers, designing a modern physical infrastructure instead of segregated roads and tunnels, and supporting the political, economic and civil society institutions necessary to create a Palestinian democracy in lieu of building a concrete wall 436 miles long and 27 feet tall.
Accompanying the slideshow, “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Difficult and Changing Landscape,” are maps including one of Jerusalem that shows, Katulis says, that “some of the key unresolved issues linked to a two-state solution lie in and around the Jerusalem area, where I spent much of last week. Take a look … to get a sense of the complicated geography and landscape in this part of the area.”
Jerusalem map shows the green line, the internationally-recognized border between Israel and Palestine, compared with the red line, where the recent right-wing Israeli government has built the separation wall in an attempt to take the city of Jerusalem.
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Perhaps some better questions might be, would the Palestinians have been better off if the billions in aid money hadn’t gone straight into their leaders’ bank accounts? Or, would there be a barrier if suicide bombers didn’t go Jew-hunting in crowded restaurants?
You seem to suggest that it’s up to the world and Israel to build up Palestinian political, economic and civil society. It seems to me that it’s up to the Palestinians themselves. You can only blame Israel so much.