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^Student groups weigh in on West Bank barrier ABOVE: OBED BALILTY/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BELOW: GRACE BLAKELY/SPECIAL TO THE GAMECOCK Above, a Palestinian man walks next to a section of the 30-foot high wall on Monday, part of Israel's separation barrier still under construction, in the West Bank village of A-Ram in the northern outskirts of Jerusalem. Below, a view of a section of the Israeli barrier under construction, taken by Grace Blakely, a USC student who visited Israel last month. i. ---> : : ~ ,,, .. ,a. ™?!■kf. ,,■■ ■.:r:■ &U WALL Continued from page 1 with a crisis on the other side of the world. “You just don’t see the impact in I your everyday life,” she said. “Unless you’re a CNN junky, you just don’t realize how many people are dying over there. You just see numbers.” Rashid Fraij, a member of the Muslim Student Association and a first-year liberal arts student, said he felt obligated to protest the divisive construction in Israel. “My parents being Palestinian, 1 feel I have a responsibility to show what’s going on overseas. Even though it might not be the top story -1 on the news, there are people dying every day,” he said. Grace Blakely, president of Students Defending Democracy and a second-year math student, was part of the counter-protest. “We’re here to get the other side of the story out,” she said. Blakely said Israel had a right to aerena irseir. :>ne saia u supporters of the Palestinians say it’s a human rights issue, “Well, we say it’s a human rights issue, too, that Israelis have the right not to have to worry about their children being blown up,” she said. Blakely recently spent two weeks in Israel on a trip sponsored by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. She said she visited a facility near Gaza where both Palestinians and Israelis come to work. She said she saw the security barrier and “in most areas, along 98 percent of it, it’s a chain link fence, nothing like this.” “I saw there was an area where there was shrapnel on the floor from where a woman had blown herself up,” Blakely said. “If the Palestinians say they’re being cut off from water, well, really they should try to develop infrastructure in their own country and keep people from killing each other.” Blakely called the checkpoints a relatively minor impediment for Palestinians. ARAFAT “There are checkpoints through which Palestinians can go to get to Israel, and it’s true that it’s not easy to get through these checkpoints, but, you know, that’s the price that the Palestinians have to pay, because their fellow Palestinians have committed such atrocities,” she said. Blakely compared the West Bank wall to ones Americans had built. “The barrier, it’s a security barrier,” she said. “There are essentially similar barriers all over the world. There’s a barrier in Korea to protect South Korea from North Korea. Even in the United States we have a fence along our southern border to keep Mexicans out, and, if that’s legitimate, then it’s certainly legitimate to keep people out of your country to keep them from killing you.” Michael Berg, director of the Carolina Peace Resource Center, called the wall “a method for stealing Palestinian territory i was aciuany m Israel a month ago and we saw the security barrier, and in most areas, along 98 percent of it, it’s a chain link fence, nothing like this.” GRACE BLAKELY PRESIDENT OF STUDENTS DEFENDING DEMOCRACY making life miserable for hundreds of thousands of people.” He said that the wall has been condemned by the U.N. Security Council and that Palestinians often feel forced to resort to violence. “People say, ‘Why is there no Gandhi?’ There are lots of Palestinian Gandhis, but they get jailed and shot,” he said. Berg said Americans tend to personalize the conflict in the form of Yasser Arafat, that Israel literally cements its position in Palestinian territory while jailing and executing young Palestinian leaders. He said the wall was built on Palestinian land and that Israel had no right to occupy it in the first place. Dean Neistat, a member of Hillel and a fourth-year business student, said he supported Israel’s move. “The wall is the strongest action Israel has taken to establish peaceful relations with their neighbors,” he said. “The wall has saved Israeli lives. From the first half of 2002 to the first half of 2004, the number of Israelis killed has been reduced by 80 percent,” he said. “Good fences make good neighbors.” Jeremiah Bush, a member of Students Defending Democracy and a fourth-year international studies student, said he didn’t condemn either side, but he hoped both, especially the Palestinians, would halt their terror tactics. He said he was happy the two sides of the issue had remained so cordial at use. Comments on this story? E-mail gamecockmrws@gwm.sc.edu *Substanee*free event, free refreshments and Entertainment. Musi have valid USC Student ID. A □ 9/25 vs. TROY STATE 10/9 vs. MISSISSIPPI 10/30 vs. TENNESSEE 11/6 vs. ARKANSAS • Esiitty. . wWw.sa.sc.edu/adg: London $271 Paris Amsterdam $278 Rome Restrictions apply. Taxes not included. Fares are based on round-trip and subject to change. No Service Fee for Britrail & turaii passes! 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