It is absolutely not true that the leaders of Israel want to turn it into a Jewish ghetto, isolated from its neighbors. What they strive for, as they’ve been hammering it into our heads time and again, is for Israel to blend in with its neighbors in peaceful coexistence.
This is precisely what I believe as well.
So let no one ask me: Why then is Israel building that ugly cement wall on Palestinian land to isolate itself from the Palestinians?
For I would immediately answer by saying: it could it be because the Palestinians are a wretched lot, or that Israel simply doesn’t want to mix with them, or maybe it’s because of the arms they carry – which obviously has nothing at all to do with resisting the Israeli occupation of their land.
Or perhaps Israel wanted to compensate for the dire loss the world suffered when another wall in Berlin – no less ugly than the Israeli one – came tumbling down. In any case, wall or no wall, Israel certainly wants to blend in with its neighbors in peaceful coexistence.
And please let’s not even talk about that news published last week in the Israeli military magazine Bamahane about Israel’s plans to build another wall – this time not along the Palestinian borders, but on its border with Egypt in Sinai which runs more than 220 kilometers.
The news about the wall came out around the same time a Swiss adventurer announced the New Seven Wonders. Had he waited a little, he would have found this unprecedented wall to be a major competitor to the Great Wall of China, which, though certainly much more beautiful is a bit more dilapidated.
Until they build the Great Wall of Israel along the Egyptian border, our Swiss friend will have to make do with the present wall that Sharon has built – one like no other anywhere else in the world. And just as history will remember that Egypt’s great Pharaoh Cheops was the one who built the great Pyramid, it will also remember that Israel’s little Pharaoh Ariel Sharon was the one who built that reinforced wall which no one had ever thought of before.
Perhaps one of the most important ways history will remember Sharon is that he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt Israel’s deep-seated desire to live in peace with its neighbors; and its constant effort to blend in, which should, in now way, be an obstacle to building walls around Israel from all sides to isolate it.
There you have it – years later, Israel has now proven Sharon’s theory behind building that ugly wall with its plans to build another, even greater one along the Sinai border.
By building the Great Wall of Israel, Israel will only have a small open border with Syria, an even smaller ones with Jordan and Lebanon. It will certainly cost less to build walls on those borders than the one dividing it and Sinai, and it would also take less time.
Logic dictates that Israel must therefore continue building these walls to protect itself from danger – considering, of course, that it’s a small country that wants to live in peace with those neighbors whose land it has occupied and refuses to leave.
If this turns Israel into a Jewish ghetto, isolated from its neighbors, it will certainly be a ghetto for peace, a symbol of the desire for mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence with ones neighbors.
In this case, the Great Wall of Israel will, without a doubt, deserve to be one of the most important new world wonders – in fact, more than any other wonder in the world, it will not cease . to make one wonder!
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Writer’s Union of Egypt and editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo. This article is syndicated in the Arabic press.