A wall in Palestine
| Un mur en Palestine
BACKMANN René
Fayard , France , Paris , 2006 , 306 pages
Summary
In the spring of 2002, the Israeli government started the construction of a 650 km long wall in the occupied West Bank. This gigantic work is to be achieved in 2007. For the state of Israel, this ‘security barrier’ is meant to stop Palestinian terrorists from penetrating its territory. For the Palestinians, this ‘wall of separation’, which, de facto, annexes a substantial part of their future state to Israel, is yet another border imposed upon them by force.
Is the wall in Palestine a way to fight terrorism or an obstruction to peace?
René Backmann addresses this question from many possible perspectives: the Israeli settlers, the Israeli army members, the conceivers of the wall, the dispossessed Palestinian land owners, the Palestinian mayors of towns and villages… Allying research to field work and reportage, the author offers the reader a very clear perspective on the current situation around the wall, providing us with the tools to give an answer to that question, or to understand his own