Israel's Wall of Separation, designed to protect Israelis from Palestinians, looks more like the formalization through structure of the policies of separation that many liken to apartheid. Amnesty International believes that the construction by Israel of the fence/wall inside the Occupied Territories violates international law and is contributing to grave human rights violations.
The Bush administration plans to build a wall in Baghdad to separate Shiites from Sunnis are similarly futile. When walls are built instead of diplomatic solutions, the causes of war/strife are never addressed. Instead, those causes are cemented into the foundations of the wall, lending them credence and permanence.
As the failed experiment of the U.S. Green Zone in Baghdad has already shown, security walls won't stop sectarian strife and terrorism in Iraq. And there is a certain gross stupidity and lack of tact evidenced on the part of this President's administration for its failure to understand how this fence may pique ire in an Arab country where no one needs to be reminded of Israel's fence.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mouri al-Maliki said as much this week when he ordered construction on the wall to cease. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also condemned the wall, calling it a sign of foreign occupation.
What kind of a country have we created for Iraqis if its citizens are forced to live behind security walls? Building walls to separate and segregate citizens of the same country is absurd. It is futile. It is a sleight of hand gesture aimed at distracting from the real problem; namely, that our war in Iraq is a flawed war which is built on lies.
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