Action on the Wall

Why support consumer action  against companies involved in  the construction of the wall? As far  as I know no  architect is involved in the planning and construction of the  wall. But this fact does not mean that the wall has no architecture. So who is   the architect of the wall? Is it the government drawing its ideal path? The  settlements councils that succeed to impose convenient  loops that encapsulate  their real estate interest? The American administration that imposes moderations on the path? The High Court  of Justice ruling against some segments and ordering their  dismantling? The activists that demonstrate against it and bring  more segments to court? The ruling of the International  Court of  Justice that spread the ambient fear haunting government decisions   and even the very ruling of the HCJ?

In fact every actor  engaged with  constructive and oppositional action to the wall takes  part in its collective  albeit diffused authorship. What allows this  to take place is the very  ‘flexibility’ of the wall – which does not  mean that its concrete elements are  soft but – as architectural lingo has it – that the yet unfinished project of  the wall is  capable of incorporating political pressure into its very path. According to this principle of flexibility the path of the wall  could be read  as a diagram of sorts for all political forces  operating in its vicinity. This flexibility is simultaneously an  empowering and a frustrating principle. Empowering because pressure  on the wall has been demonstrated to bring some results on the  ground, (here further pressure in the form of consumer action against companies involved may be effective), and frustrating because any  action on the path of the wall helps confirm it as a  fact.

So how could those  of us that oppose the very idea of the wall  – not merely its path – resolve  this conceptual paradox? The answer  is complicated but the direction is clear.  It is a combination of  action on the micro level and on the ground together  with scholarly  work aiming to destabilise the foundations of the very order of   things on the macro level may bring a hope for change. The  occupation and the  injustices of the conflict stretch far beyond the  settlements and the wall,  extending throughout the Israeli state and  legal system, within the green line  and beyond it.  Local action may expose the paradoxes of the system, but  actions limited  to each scale of action alone would not suffice.

Eyal Weizman - March 2006