Table of Contents
TRANSPARENT WALL, OPAQUE GATES
Edited by Michael Sorkin
The New Press, New York, 2005
Dr. Ruchama Marton; Dr. Dalit Baum
A. TRANSPARENT WALL
In a recent conversation with one of our friends, a prominent Israeli artist and designer, Prof. Ziona Shimshi, commented that the concrete Wall was quite ugly, and suggested it could have been built from a transparent material, like a polycarbonate Silicone, Lexan, that is extremely strong and used to construct spacecrafts. We found this suggestion intriguing – it was a way of calling into question the existence of the Wall, but on aesthetic grounds. It conveyed a need to see the other side – but only through Lexan. Why IS the Wall so ugly? What is it supposed to block from our view? What does it expose while concealing?
The Gilo Wall
The suggestion of a transparent Wall immediately brought to mind the famous picture of the Gilo Wall, by the Israeli photographer Miki Kratzman. Gilo is a Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Its main street is lined by an odd assortment of concrete slabs, erected in the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada as a shelter from sniper fire from the neighboring Palestinian town of Beit Jalla. In the picture, the pastoral view of the Beit Jalla hills is continued in painted form along the concrete slabs Wall. A pine tree and some stones behind this Wall are portrayed on it as if 1 it were transparent. The painting is meant to conceal the Wall itself by reconstructing the concealed view; by concealing the concealment. The reconstructed view serves as a second concealment, since the painted houses on the painted hills are devoid of people. They were supposed to portray the houses of Beit Jalla, but they look like those of a little eastern European village, maybe because the artists were immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
ZIC
Kratzman's picture is an artful illustration of some basic assumptions, deeply held by Israelis, or, more precisely, by members of the imagined collective of Zionist Israelis, or what we will call the Zionist Israeli Collective, the ZIC. The collective is organized around these unchallengeable basic assumptions and most aspects of life in Israel are affected by them.
Such underlying basic assumptions are that "we are pure, we are right, we have high moral values, we don't do evil, we are victims, and we are united." In the ZIC's eyes, its army conducts itself with "purity of arms," meaning that it uses only unavoidable force, only for the self defense of the ZIC. According to the ZIC, Israeli moral values are dominant and exemplary.
The ZIC is held together by a common feeling of victimhood: Jews carry a long history of being victims in different places and times; and behind Israeli military might, the ZIC still maintains the identity of a victim, always preparing for the inevitable catastrophe. In Palestine, the ZIC has always viewed itself as being under mortal threat from "Arabs". These mortal fears have shifted over the years between fears of invasion, defeat in war, of becoming a Jewish demographic minority again, and most lately, the fear of suicide bombings.
Closely connected to the victim identity is the deterministic belief that "the whole world is against us". "The Arabs" too become part of this a-historical enemy entity, focused wholly on Jewish destruction, always intent on "throwing us into the sea".
Another extremely important Zionist axiom is that Palestine was an empty land ("a land without people to a people without a land" is a well known early Zionist slogan, attributed to Israel Zangwill in 1892). This belief was very much needed at the time: it allowed Zionists to maintain their self-image as righteous people, avoiding the notion of taking another people's land. But the land was not empty, therefore, the ZIC implemented an active non-seeing mechanism: its members actually saw an empty land.
This has all worked quite well for years; but the Palestinian uprising, the Intifada, made it much harder not to see Palestinians. In order to protect itself, the ZIC has built a Wall that conceals the Palestinians. Of course, the stated reason for the Wall was defense: defense from bullets (overt), defense from seeing (covert). The self-image remained as it should be: pure, good, righteous. The Wall maintains the illusion that on the "other side" is the empty land we have come to inherit: we cannot see over it, we cannot see through it; we see nothing but it – and the land continues to be empty.
Discussing the Wall as a defense mechanism2 of the ZIC, it seems appropriate to discuss it in psychological terms, especially since one of us is a practicing psychiatrist.
The Wall has many psychological advantages: what one doesn't see actually doesn't exist. As one knows from the theatre – when the curtain falls, the world we have experienced on stage seems to have come to an end. It is 'as if' this world does not exist any more. The curtain, as the Wall, is all we see. Moreover, seeing means acknowledging the existence of the seen, it is a form of understanding. This serves as a very convenient way out of inner conflict: not seeing, therefore not understanding, ensures psychological blindness. This way, there is no danger of achieving an insight.
Splitting
A useful way of understanding some of the psychological mechanisms involved in the Wall is the concept of splitting. The power and magic of the splitting mechanism lies in its simplicity. It permits only two extremes; the whole world is split into "good" and "bad," with nothing in between. According to Melanie Klein, splitting is the psychological defense mechanism that separates good from bad, both in oneself and in the Other: “Splitting is caused by a high level of anxiety, which offers no options or choice and is considered to be the most primitive kind of defense against anxiety: the object, (the Other) with both erotic and destructive instincts directed towards it, splits into ‘good’ and ‘bad’… The splitting of objects is accompanied by a parallel splitting of the ego (the subject or oneself) into a ‘good’ ego and a ‘bad’ one.” In this manner, the splitting mechanism splits both the inner self and the Other into the same extremes, pure and good, versus bad and evil.
Fright activates the most immediate of mechanisms, a primitive mechanism of brute force. As such, the splitting process requires continuous maintenance, and an ever-increasing investment of energy. Eventually, it is not an effective mechanism. It does not reduce the anxiety, only blocks it; it does not enable working through the causes of the anxiety, but just distances them.
The Wall separates the contents of the inner space into two parts: the "bad," unwanted parts, which are hard to deal with, and the "good" parts, which are in accord with the self-image. The "bad” parts are externalized, in other words, projected onto the Other. Thus, the ZIC self is preserved as good and pure.
Projective Identification
Projecting an unwanted part of the self outwards onto the Other serves two goals: relief from the unwanted part, and legitimacy to despise this part in the other. Moreover, this mechanism enables the fantasy of control and possession of the projected parts, in this case, the "bad" parts. Klein defines projective identification as a “mechanism revealed in fantasies in which the subject inserts his self – in whole or in part – into the object to harm, possess or control it.”
The Wall allows the ZIC self not to see itself as aggressive, violent, cruel, possessive, a violator of human rights, by projecting all these traits on the Palestinians beyond the Wall.
The Wall is not perceived by the ZIC as an aggressive act – it is perceived as a protective act, an act of self-defense, protecting itself from aggression associated only with the Palestinians. It takes a complex psychological mechanism to facilitate such a reversal. This way, the Wall achieves its goal: protecting the ZIC from seeing its own aggression and thus preserving its basic assumptions that it is the "good," "just" victim.
Looking at the Wall
The concrete Wall is an anachronistic splitting device, it is both ugly and opaque, and as such it is highly suitable for its role in the psychological mechanisms described above.
It is anachronistic – the formidable concrete Wall seems out of place and time, a "simple" physical "solution" to a historically, politically and psychologically complex question. The ZIC views itself as post-modern, high-tech, up-to-date, sophisticated; as a fashionable Westerner front in the wild (Middle) East. "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East", the tourists' ads proclaim. In the ZIC's mind, the Wall functions as a space/time machine, a tool to separate the ZIC from primitive regions of the world that surround it. The Wall helps to locate the primitive, simpleton, backwards and savage aspects of the Palestinians behind it. Thus it preserves the ZIC's own self image as advanced, civilized, sophisticated, high tech on the other side of the same Wall .
It is ugly – because it serves the need to create the illusion of an evil, ugly monster on the other side, rather than ordinary people. The Palestinian existence within the Wall is considered inferior, ugly, dirty, violent, and dangerous. A recent illustration of these ideas and concepts can be found in the court testimony of Prof. Rafi Israeli (The Hebrew University, Middle Eastern Studies) as state expert in the trial against the leaders of the Islamic movement in Israel: “the Arabs are neglecting their hygiene. Their villages are dirty. They are criminals in high percentage. They are noisy”. The Wall thus becomes both a symbol and realization of the impossibility of identifying with Palestinians.
It is opaque in order to prevent the sight of misery and suffering on the other side. If it was transparent, we could actually see the troubling suffering of the people on the other side. We might see the child who must go through the hills to school and cannot; or the father who cannot reach his farm to cultivate his olive trees; or the sick person who cannot make his or her way to the hospital; or the pregnant woman who cannot deliver her child in safety, or worse, is forced to give birth in the dirt next to the checkpoint. Seeing this misery and suffering might trigger compassion for those people, might develop identification with them. This must be avoided at all costs, because otherwise the question might arise: who caused this suffering?
Walls and Fences
Further away from urban population centers, the concrete Wall gives way to a system of fences, razor wire, and various surveillance mechanisms – sensors, watch stations and watchtowers. Some forms of seeing are to be avoided, but others are considered valuable. The ZIC does not want to see the Palestinians, but it finds it necessary to oversee them, to watch them with non-human sight, through a gun sight.
"It is easier to shoot through a fence, than it is through a Wall", remarked one Israeli activist in the Mas'ha Peace Camp. The Camp consisted of two tents on the outskirts of the West Bank Palestinian village Mas'ha, near the construction site of the Wall. Dozens of Palestinians, Israelis and International activists shared the camp for almost five months in 2003, in protest against the Wall. Six months later, during another protest at the same site, Gil Na'amati, an Israeli activist from the same group, was shot through the wire fence and was severely injured.
B. OPAQUE GATES
Security
The Wall, in some places made of gray concrete three stories high, snakes across the West Bank. The ZIC notes its ugliness, but blames it on the Palestinians. The Wall is justified as a necessary security measure. The ostensible reason for the wall is very concrete; the Wall supposedly exists in order to physically prevent a Palestinian youth with explosives strapped on to his or her body from reaching the ZIC body and harming it. Potential terrorists should be prevented from reaching our territory, driving on our roads, sitting at our cafes, shopping at our markets, riding our buses. But all Palestinians are potential terrorists in the ZIC's mind. In other words, for it to achieve its main goal the Wall aims to prevent all suspicious Palestinians, i.e. all Palestinians, from reaching the ZIC's body, i.e. anywhere.
As repeatedly claimed by its planners, the Wall does not delineate the ZIC's borders, since Israel has never defined its own borders and is still refusing to do so. It is a security apparatus designed to defend the ZIC from various threats. As Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime minister, said, “Israel is a villa in the jungle”. In the ZIC's mind, the Wall functions as a space/time machine, a tool to separate the ZIC from primitive regions of the world around it. In this image the world is full of dangers that threaten the white man living in the villa. The Wall is conceived as a part of the villa and, as such, not surprisingly has come to symbolize the ZIC body itself. Army firing regulations have been changed to permit a response to any attack on the Wall as if it were an attack on Jewish lives. The shooting of Israeli activist Gil Na'amati was justified by the fact that he and his group "Anarchists against the Wall" were attempting to open a gate in the Wall. Palestinian residents who wander too close to the Wall have been shot at and killed, and their deaths later justified by army regulations.
Movement
In recent years there has been a vast intensification in the erection of fortifications and fences, roadblocks and checkpoints, walls and watchtowers throughout the West Bank. All of these physical barriers, including the Wall in all its forms, are part of an elaborate system controlling Palestinian movement; a system which includes regiments like sieges and curfews, bureaucratic and legal inventions, technological innovations and brute force. This is not only an attempt to control all forms of movement, but in fact a mechanical attempt to control all aspects of Palestinian life. When viewed as a system for controlling life and movement, a system with dynamic functions, the Wall is, in fact, no more then a frame for its openings, a series of gates and checkpoints that control and regulate all movement flow.
The Amers' House
One example of the fantasy of total control over Palestinian life by controlling their movement can be seen in the Amer family's house on the outskirts of the Palestinian village Mas'ha. This was the last site of the Mas'ha Peace Camp in August 2003, and after the Camp was torn down and all the activists arrested, one segment of a 25 feet high concrete Wall was erected between the house and the rest of Mas'ha. For miles and miles in both directions, the wire Fence cuts through the olive groves; it encircles the house on all sides, but the only place where the Wall takes its concrete form is between this house and its village. When the Amers look through their windows, they see either the neighboring Jewish settlement of Elkana, or they see the Wall.
The Wall around the house is locking the family in. On three sides there are four gates. One huge gate separates Mas'ha from the Jewish settlement of Elkana; two vehicular gates for army patrols connect this Wall segment to the rest of the Wall; and one small gate allows family members supervised access to their village. The ominous yellow gates are formidable, equipped with motion and touch sensors. No one can come and go without the approval of the army.
Buffer Zone
Just like the Amers, thousands of Palestinian residents are cut off from the rest of the West Bank, from their fields, workplaces, from neighboring towns and vital services. "The seam area" is the Israeli name given to areas locked between the Wall and the 1949 ceasefire border of the state of Israel. Immediately after the completion of the first stage of the Wall in October 2003, the seam area was declared a closed military zone: no Palestinians are allowed in this area without a special permit.
For Palestinians living in this area, an extensive permit system was devised by the Israeli authorities. They are required to apply for permits to continue living in their own homes. Other residents of the West Bank have to obtain special permits to enter the seam area through special gates. There are twelve different kinds of permits, based on the purpose of entry. Each permit indicates a certain gate through which the permit holder must cross, as well as the times of day during which the holder is allowed to pass. Sleeping over in the seam area, bringing a vehicle into the area or transporting merchandise into the area requires additional permits. A long list of forms, certificates and documents are necessary for applying for different permits. The criteria for obtaining permits are not stated anywhere, and the Israeli authorities have almost complete discretion to grant or deny the permits. Permits may be denied on the grounds of secret security concerns by the Military Appeals Committee. The permits have arbitrary expiration times, and have to be constantly renewed.
The permit system is designed to incorporate the entire seam area into the control mechanism. The total control of minute aspects of Palestinian lives in this area secures it as a buffer zone, an added volume to the physical obstacle, a living Wall.
Control
This system is not merely bureaucratic and Kafkaesque. Again, a psychological explanation can be useful: In an obsessive disorder, fear of death plays a central role and there is a deeply-held belief that certain actions prevent impending death of the self and of loved ones. The body's orifices are conceived as danger zones, through which hostile agents may penetrate, infect and cause disease or death. In fantasy, total control of the orifices is achievable, preventing all penetrations and thus protecting the self from fear of disease, death and feelings of helplessness. The fantasy of keeping orifices clear of germs is well illustrated by the military concept of controlling the openings along the Wall.
The obsessive control of the body's openings is a typically modern control mechanism, associated with metaphors of hygiene, purity and defense from bacteria infection. Rituals are created with the aim of self-preservation from contamination, diseases and death. These rituals are constantly refined in arbitrary ways. The person knows deep down that there is no total control, thus, the anxiety is ever-present, reinforcing these rituals, which may take over an obsessive person's life, achieving precedence over all other aspects of life, requiring an ever-growing investment of resources.
Sphincters
The openings of the Wall function like sphincters, which are voluntary round muscles that one is trained to control. In the Wall case, the sphincters or openings are controlled by the army.
In the development of a child, control of the sphincters is used not only for the purpose of hygiene, but also in a struggle for independence from parents and in the attempt to demonstrate autonomous power in front of bigger, more powerful others. A child will refuse food or stop defecating as a display of control in front of worried or angry parents. Opening and closing the sphincters at will, despite outside pressures (international critique, international law) as well as strong pressures from within (economic necessities, state laws), indicates a fear of powerlessness in front of big and powerful parents, and a need to display basic and crude control of the situation.
The need for control finds its realization at the openings. This is where control is expressed. If the Wall conceals and obfuscates, its openings become clear foci of pressure – the conflict points where the powerful occupier exercises power over the weak occupied.
In spite of the great investment in denial, there is always some inner knowledge that the control system is imperfect, that there can be no total control. The relation between the methods employed and the actual protection achieved always remains unclear. Therefore, the obsessive person has to constantly invent more and more elaborate rituals of "control." After each elevation to another supposedly "secure" level, there is temporary relief and self-assurance that the method is working; but these rituals offer no permanent relief because they require continuous refinement. The price constantly gets higher and higher and, because the limitations are never considered, the fantasy has to be constantly maintained by an ever-greater investment of resources.
Concrete
The Wall is a formidable human-made construction, and it is easy to see it as symbolizing the Zionist Israeli Collective's basic assumptions and fears, standing 25 feet tall as a manifestation in concrete of security itself for the Jewish state, its yellow metallic gates realizing obsessive control fantasies. However, in its concrete form, the Wall is just a wall, and like other human-made constructions, when their symbolic worth shifts, when the beliefs and values that sustain them falter, they can disappear almost overnight.
In August 2004 we joined a mass rally against the Wall in Abu-Dis, a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals gathered to hear Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, speak about the non-violent resistance to the Wall. During the rally, one young man started free climbing onto the great concrete slabs. The audience gasped in awe as in just a few seconds the courageous climber was standing up on the Wall, waving a Palestinian flag at both sides of the Wall, which cuts through this Palestinian neighborhood. After a moment of silence, dozens of people lined up below him, and quickly followed his example. Suddenly stripped of a whole layer of beliefs and psychological investments, the massive concrete construction flickered and shifted meanings before our eyes. For that brief moment, the Wall was just a wall.
The authors wish to express their gratitude to Dorothy Zellner for her assistance in the preparation of this article.
- "[The] 'As if' personality belongs to the group of borderline personality disorders. 'As if' characters used to be called 'pseudologia fantastica'…[It] goes hand in hand with an insufficiently developed superego, predominance of aggression against the objects…"
Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism, Otto Kernberg, Jason Aronson, New York, 1975. - "Defence Mechanism: A process whereby the ego protects itself against demands of the id. More generally, it is a pattern of feeling, thought, or behavior arising in response to a perception of psychic danger, enabling a person to avoid conscious awareness of conflicts or anxiety-arousing ideas or wishes.
"Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, Andrew M. Colman, Oxford University Press, NY 2001, p. 189.