Life on the Border: The Impact of the Separation Barrier on the Residents of the Barta'a Enclave Demilitarized Zone

ABSTRACT

The route of the separation barrier between Israel and the Palestinian Authority does not coincide exactly with the border commonly known as the Green Line. As a result, a number of territorial enclaves have emerged along the length of the barrier that the State of Israel has not annexed but the Palestinian Authority is unable to administer and govern. These enclaves have become demilitarized zones of sorts, where the Palestinian residents live without any organized system of government. They have no effectual local government, no effective mechanism for collecting taxes, no organized planning, no labor laws and no veterinary supervision. The residents of these enclaves have been cut off from the West Bank, which had provided them with essential services in the past. The resultant situation should have had a deleterious impact on the residents’ economic development. In reality, however, the opposite took place. The citizens of the State of Israel see the separation barrier (and not the Green Line) as a security border and thus perceive the area as safe. Because of this sense of security, many consumers engage in lively commercial contacts with the Palestinian residents. As a result, business is booming in the villages within the enclave and the economy is flourishing. New shopping areas and stores are being built, along with garages, restaurants and factories, all benefitting from the low tax rates and cheap labor in an area where there is no established local government. The aim of this paper is to provide a multidisciplinary examination of how the residents of the village of Barta'a have coped socially, economically and politically with the changes that have taken place in their village. These changes have resulted from the remarking of the borderline, which has divided members of the same family between Israelis living in the State of Israel and Palestinians living in a territorial enclave. The paper examines how the residents cope with the geopolitical changes that have occurred along the ceasefire line over time.

Notes

1. The most familiar classification into natural and artificial borders was already made by Curzon in 1907 (Curzon 1907). Natural borders were chosen due to the ease of defining them in the field because they are based on prominent features of the landscape—rivers, mountains, swamps, deserts—while artificial borders are based on straight geometric border lines. Curzon's classifications are still useful today, mainly among politicians and public opinion shapers who use the term “natural border” in their political claims regarding the route of border lines (Biger 2001).

2. Classifying borders according to the functional nature of the borderline differentiates according to the degree of freedom of movement across these borders. These borders range from totally open borders, as for example the borders of Europe after the signing of the Schengen Agreement, which allowed for the free movement of people, goods, capital and services, to borders across which the movement of people and goods is totally blocked, for example the Israel–Lebanon border.

3. Residents living in the border area and the national political system are influenced by the very existence of the borderline and the nature of the events that take place surrounding it. This fact influences the creation of ties or border disputes between the countries on the two sides of the border (Biger 2001).

4. Smuggling across the border refers to covert transport of goods or people that is forbidden by the laws of the sovereign nation along an unauthorized route. Examples of smuggling include the smuggling of drugs, illegal immigration by means of border jumping, smuggling goods while evading customs duties, and arms smuggling. This type of smuggling takes place across international borders, whether open or closed, via various smuggling routes and paths, with economic considerations as the primary motive for the smuggling. The research literature examines the topic of smuggling mainly from the perspective of the success countries have in preventing this smuggling. The literature also considers economic interests, political and social factors, and the laws of the sovereign nation and international law. Recently the topic of smuggling has been examined from the perspective of moral geography and of the implications of smuggling on national states (Dorfman 2015). In the case of smuggling by the residents of Barta'a, most of the smuggling is of basic goods missing on one side of the border. Smuggling activities were of significant economic importance for families on both sides of the border, and they continued until the borderline was annulled in 1967 (Kabha 1986).

5. Living in the border area offers economic and educational opportunities in other places in the world as well, For example, households in Mexican border cities support themselves, in part, through clever ways of gaining access to US resources by moving children with dual residential-rights from Mexico to the US (Heyman 1994).

6. Over the past 25 years, freedom of movement in the world has been limited even more by the rapid growth of walls built between countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, commentators predicted that borders between nations would “fall” or at least lose their significance as part of the creation of the global village. Yet across the globe it seems that globalization has not led to the realization of dreams of peace and unity but rather the opposite (Andreas 2003; Brunet-Jailly 2005, 2010; Noack 2014). More and more walls and separation barriers are being erected between sectors, countries, classes, and religions (Roche 2014). The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 accelerated the building of walls (Henley 2013; Newman 2006; Paasi 2009). In the last two years the lack of political stability and the immigrant crisis in the Middle East have again accelerated the building of walls. Some of these barriers were built for security needs, some against terrorism and smuggling, and some in order to prevent poor immigrants or refugees fleeing ethnic cleansing to find refuge. Some of these fences are intended to prevent the illegal movement of migrants seeking employment (Lavorel 2014). While Israel claims that the purpose of building the separation barrier is to prevent terror attacks, the Palestinians claim it is an apartheid barrier intended for ethnic and religious separation of the population groups (Leuenberger 2014).

7. The economic flourishing of a village situated in a demilitarized zone can be seen in Cyprus as well. After the island was divided in 1974, the village of Pyla situated in the demilitarized region between the two halves of Cyprus became an economic paradise for the residents of the Greek village and for tourists from the Greek side of the island. They cross the village to the Turkish side to purchase relatively inexpensive goods, such as food, tobacco, clothing, and alcoholic beverages (Papadakis 1997).

8. Before the separation barrier was built it was not possible to distinguish between a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli Arab. Therefore the residents of the village were the subject of suspicion at military checkpoints, in work relations and at shopping centers. After the barrier was built, the security tensions were eased, thus increasing the sense of security of people on both sides, reducing suspicions and facilitating the development of joint economic ties.

9. Israelis doing shopping in the Palestinian Authority is not new. Immediately after the Six Day War in 1967 Israelis began shopping in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, taking advantages of the low prices resulting from lower labor and production costs than in Israel. Many Israelis, both Arabs and Jews, made a habit of visiting markets close to the Green Line border. Yet as security conditions worsened, the movement of shoppers decreased. Military regulations made it difficult to enter the territories of the Palestinian Authority, and the erection of the separation barrier practically did away with Israeli shopping in the West Bank. Only in the Barta'a market situated on the Israeli side of the separation barrier was entry to the West Bank permitted.

10. The largest wholesale market in the southern Caucasia region is located in the village of Sadakhlo, situated adjacent to the Georgian–Armenian border. It is estimated that goods worth hundreds of millions of dollars are sold at this market without the payment of any customs duties. In addition, the active commercial doings in this market indicate that, like the economic relations between Israelis and Palestinians in Barta'a, there is no innate hostility between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. As soon as you enter the territory of neutral Georgia, all “ethnic hatreds” die away (De Wall 2003, 269).

11. The relatively rapid growth of localities along the borderline can also be seen on the Mexican side of the border between the United States and Mexico. This is due to the migration of residents waiting for an opportunity to immigrate to the United States, business opportunities for day laborers moving close to the border with their families, the rapid development of commercial regions and opportunities for making a living based on smuggling people and goods (Heyman 1994).

12. In the Barta'a enclave as in most of the Palestinian Authority there is a lack of legislation in the area of environmental quality. Of 200 environmental laws on the Israeli side of the border, only a few are applicable on the Palestinian side. These laws are also not automatically updated and in many cases are not effective. The complexity of the security situation, mainly since 2000, makes cooperation in effectively handling hazards difficult. As a result the region suffers from almost all possible environmental hazards: illegal waste disposal sites, quarries, air pollution from the coal industry and from burning waste, industrial buildings with no licenses, haphazard sewage systems, noise pollution, and more. Because environmental quality issues do not recognize political borders, environmental problems emerge that cross the borders and affect both population groups, such as air pollution, ground water pollution, odor pollution, mosquito hazards, and the like (Levy 2012).