The closure policy Israel uses against the Palestinian population
in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is unique in the world of
geopolitics or the geography of borders. Indeed, there are no
recorded examples in any part of the world of what is known as
"closure"; it is a one-hundred-percent Israeli invention. As a
result, certain features of political borders have emerged in the
area, as it is the first time that borders between peoples are
defined through the use of closure, both as mechanism and measure
for boundary demarcation.
The closure, which Israel began to implement on a wide scale in
April 1993, was previously used in 1991 during the Gulf War, when
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were sealed for six consecutive
weeks. Following the massacre at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron on
February 25, 1994, Israel started using the closure on a more
extensive and permanent basis. The aim was to prevent friction
between Palestinians and Israelis.
The policy of closure reached its height in March 1996, in the wake
of several Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv,
killing and wounding scores of Israelis. Israel decided to embark
on preparations of plans and budgets for the closure to arrive at
political separation between the two peoples, Israelis and
Palestinians.
Political separation, however, entails the determination and
drawing of borders between two entities. To this day, Israel has
not defined its political boundaries. Thus, a permanent border
demarcation is expected to take place during the final stage of the
peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian National
Authority (PNA).
Closure - A Definition
Closure is an Israeli government decision to restrict and forbid
the movement and entry of Palestinians from the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip into Israel and Jerusalem - including its Arab part. It
is implemented through security checkpoints manned by Israeli
soldiers, Border Police and other Israeli security bodies, along
inexistent borders.
Borders, as a concept and convention for separation, can be defined
as a line or a boundary where the features and characteristics of a
certain area end and those of another area begin, with each one
containing homogeneous and analogous elements. Various criteria,
natural or artificial, can be used in the determination and
delineation of borders, but these are beyond the scope of this
article, which attempts to draw a connection between closure and
borders.
Types of Closure
According to Israeli understanding, closure is a political boundary
and implies the separation between Israelis and Palestinians,
specifically between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, on the one
hand, and Jerusalem (including the Arab part) and Israel, on the
other. This closure is known as "tota1." Another type of closure,
which is imposed on occasion within the Palestinian areas
themselves in 465 Palestinian conglomerations, is called "internal"
closure. This form of closure that Israel began using in March 1996
is more severe and crippling than the former as it leaves close to
two million Palestinians virtual prisoners in their respective
towns and villages. Total closure, on the other hand, does not
forbid movement among the towns or villages of the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip, but it denies entry to Palestinians into Jerusalem
and Israe1.
Israel claims the closure is imposed on the Palestinian territories
as a security measure. Palestinians view the reason as political,
which will eventually turn the closure into political borders
between the two entities. Thus, the closure that we see today begs
the question whether it is a precursor to a future political border
between Palestinians and Israelis, or whether it is just a passing
phenomenon, albeit a three-year-long one. It is the contention of
this article that closure is an aspect of determining borders, and
it is being transformed into future political borders between
Israelis and Palestinians.
The Case of Jerusalem
"Total" and "internal" closures alike cause great suffering for
Palestinians, including those in East Jerusalem. It should be
emphasized at this point that there are no natural, social or
cultural borders between the Palestinians of East Jerusalem and
those living in the West Bank: they are of the same ethnic origin,
they have the same national identity, and they have the same
culture, civilization, language and religion. Consequently, the
closure that East Jerusalem suffers is the hardest and cruelest
type because it aims at separating the inhabitants of East
Jerusalem from their Palestinian hinterland. Isolating Jerusalem in
this manner signifies a de facto political annexation of the Arab
part of the city with its land and people. Indeed, one of the aims
of closing off Jerusalem is the consolidation of the city's
annexation and the moving of the Green Line four to six kilometers
eastward.
In the case of the Palestinians in Jerusalem, the suffering from
closure is compounded by internal "borders" between the eastern and
western side of the city. Roman and Winograd in their study, Living
Together Separately, point to the separation which exists between
Palestinians and Israelis in Jerusalem, in spite of the fact that
they live in one single city. This is due to the lack of
homogeneity between the two peoples based on ethnic, religious,
economic and social grounds which, in turn, reflects itself on the
political situation. These researchers, however, did not deal with
the subject of closure which exacerbates the separation suffered by
the Palestinians in East Jerusalem who are also cut off from their
natural strategic depth, the people and land of the West
Bank.
In fact, intra-city borders can be seen in many cities around the
world. A case in point is Belfast where boundaries exist between
Protestants and Catholics on the religious level, and between Irish
and British on ethnic grounds. But even in this context, closure
has never been applied against the Irish or vice versa.
Another example is Berlin which was divided on an ideological
basis. The Berlin Wall, which was tom down in 1989, was erected in
1961 by the Soviet Union to separate between the Communist eastern
part of the city and the western part with its capitalist
regime.
The city of Jerusalem passed through a similar experience between
1948 and 1967, when the cease-fire line was turned into a physical
border between the two sections of the city, western and eastern.
Following the 1967 war, this physical border was tom down, but it
soon turned into a psychological one for all the aforementioned
reasons.
Closure as Borders
Although closure as practiced by Israel has its own distinctive
features, it also shares many characteristics with regular
political borders:
A. 'Closure' borders are one-directional:
Under normal circumstances, borders between two countries consist
of two-way points of entry for the nationals of either country.
Closure differs from regular borders in the sense that Jerusalem
residents wishing to enter the West Bank can do so freely without
any need for a permit. In contrast, for those entering Jerusalem
from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, entry permits are a must.
This mandatory permission to enter Jerusalem represents a visa
which is commonly required by countries around the world upon the
entry of foreign nationals. Thus, the application for a special
permit to cross the checkpoint (closure border) is, to all
practical intents, an application for a visa.
B. 'Closure' borders are bound by time:
The permanent closure imposed on the Palestinian territories since
1993 is of varying degrees of intensity or severity. In times of
total closure, all entry permits (visas) are automatically revoked.
When the closure is eased or lifted, only those holders of special
permits are allowed into Jerusalem and Israel. These permits are
always subject to various restrictions, such as time (the specific
hour of entry and exit) and duration (a day, a week or a month).
For West Bank residents working in East Jerusalem, for instance,
permits are issued to enter East Jerusalem only, and are valid for
a few weeks or up to a maximum of three months. Those who want to
enter Jerusalem for medical purposes or for treatment, get permits
good for a specific day and hour, based on a doctor's report or a
clinic appointment.
C. 'Closure' borders are selective:
Closure does not affect all inhabitants in the same manner and
degree. Israelis can pass freely through checkpoints (i.e., they
can go in and out of the closure border at will) without any need
for an entry permit. Palestinians, on the other hand, are required
to have entry permits, and, until recently, a process of selection
was used even among the Palestinian population whereby children did
not need permits, and, in some cases, neither did women and men of
a certain age.
Selection is also based on the nature of an applicant's activity. A
West Bank doctor practicing in Jerusalem needs appropriate
documents from the medical institution to which he belongs to
enable him to obtain an entry permit without time limitation.
Similarly, West Bank students need to produce registration
documents from the educational institutions they attend in
Jerusalem, but the permits they get are limited to the days and
hours of their studies, prohibiting an overnight stay in
Jerusalem.
The same applies to workers who obtain a permit/visa to enter
Jerusalem. They are obliged to return to their place of residence
in the West Bank or Gaza, for their permit does not provide for an
overnight stay in Jerusalem or Israel. These entry permits, then,
do not allow the bearer to, say, go shopping or to get medical
treatment or even to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Holy
Sepulcher.
D. 'Closure' borders are simultaneously formal and
informal:
Borders are formal where Palestinians are concerned, since they
need to obtain an entry permit (a visa) to "cross" into Jerusalem.
On the other hand, the borders are informal, undeclared and
one-sided, since the same country [Israel] controls both their
ends. Israeli settlers coming from their settlements in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip do not need a visa because they are
crossing the borders of their own state!
Conclusion
Its distinctive features notwithstanding, closure is
gradually turning into a border between the Palestinian and Israeli
entities. And whether denied or granted, an application for an
entry permit into Jerusalem and Israel symbolizes an application
for a visa. Nevertheless, although the closure sets out to lay the
ground for future political boundaries between Palestine and
Israel, the final delineation of borders will have to be discussed
during final-status talks, in tandem with the questions of
sovereignty, settlements, water and Jerusalem. An arduous task lies
ahead.
Bibliography
Budge, Ian (1973). Belfast: an Approach to Crisis. Macmillan: Great
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Nakhal, Muhammad (1996). Jerusalem, Berlin, Belfast and Divided
Metropolis. Jerusalem:
Arab Studies Society.
Pound, Norman (1962). Divided Germany and Berlin. New Jersey: Van
Nostraud Company, Inc.
Roman, Michael and Alex Winograd (1991). Living Together
Separately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem. Jerusalem:
The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.