Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Ramble 22: The Wall...or, Target's coming to town

On another ramble Marge notices a dark silhouette against the northern sky near the estuary: Target.
It's coming to an Alameda Landing near you - and sooner than you think.
When it does, poof! there goes the skyline, replaced by a building that goes up in huge prefab slabs held by 2 by 4s.

Since Sergei isn't there to talk Marge down from the image of Target looming over Alameda, her thoughts of impending doom run away with her: Yikes, that looks like The Separation Wall that snakes over large junks of the West Bank and annexes Palestinian land to Israel.
Later, Marge talks to an Alamedan friend about the state of construction and asks, "What does it remind you of?"

Without missing a beat, the Alamedan friend responds, "Of the Separation Barrier in the West Bank...."

Do you think that's far-fetched?

Well, see for yourself.









 

Here's the Target wall-raising...
The line of what looks like toothpicks in the pic on the left is a line of 2 x 4s holding up The Wall ...




 


and here's The Wall or Separation Barrier through the West Bank.
30 meters high in some spots - close to 90 feet - it is high enough to block out the sun for hours at sunrise and sunset.
The section pictured here goes straight through what was, once, a Palestinian family's business: growing and selling vegetables from their green house and a run for about 40,000 chickens.  Both were destroyed for the road the IDF insisted had to be routed right through the gardens and pens.
Family friends painted the mural shown here that includes a phoenix rising from the ashes (you can just see a bit of it's wings - that orange-color in the distance).
The paved road you see on the left is the military-only road that an Israeli Defense Force patrol drives twice a day. It is locked with a padlock on the gate at each end of the family property. A pad locked gate at the end of this section of wall on the left - also locked and unlocked by the IDF each morning and afternoon - allows family members to come and go; if the soldiers forget to unlock the gate the family is confined to this cage.) /what was once an independently well-enough-off family, is, today, a family struggling to survive on the income the head of the household can make selling water from a truck with a small water tank on the back.

True, Target is more likely to lock customers into the store than to lock them out (can't thrive if no customers) and, besides the way they look, the Walls aren't that similar: for one thing, Target's walls are far flimsy-er than the Separation Barrier. Both walls separate communities though.

and, if, like Marge, you found this all too depressing.... here's a snippet of music to cheer you up, Pink Floyd's The Wall.

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