A massive, meandering barrier made up of concertina and electronic fences and high concrete and stone walls (mostly alongside urban areas). The wall is accompanied by land ditches and security roads on each side, electronic motion sensors, a host of hi-tech surveillance cameras, watchtowers, military-run checkpoints, and agricultural gates with restricted access. It began to be built by Israel in 2002, ostensibly as a “border barrier” separating between Israel and the West Bank, and for security reasons (which is why it is also referred to in Israeli discourse as an “anti-terrorism fence” or a “security barrier”). Construction remains uncompleted, but the projected length of the structure (760 km) is twice that of the Green Line, and the majority (85 percent) of the wall’s route actually winds deep within the occupied West Bank (including Jerusalem—see Jerusalem Envelope), carving out 9.4 percent of the occupied Palestinian territories and effectively unilaterally establishing a new border that has no basis in law, diplomacy, or any type of concern for Palestinian lives and communities.
Effectively, the wall has functioned to attach the greatest amount of Palestinian land to the state with the fewest number of Palestinians, and it has worked to disrupt, fragment, and isolate Palestinian communities across the West Bank and separate many of them from their agricultural, social, and economic infrastructures and resources.
The wall is commonly referred to by Palestinians as the Apartheid Wall “jidar al-fasil al-o’nsori” or just the Wall (al-jidar).