Tonight at 7 p.m. at the Memorial Union, a Palestinian activist will speak about the controversy surrounding \the Apartheid Wall,"" as Palestinians call it, which the Israeli government is now constructing in the West Bank.
According to UW-Madison political science Professor Michael Barnett, the Israeli government is claiming the wall, which surrounds Palestinian territories within the nation, will help to intercept suicide bombers.
""The presumption is that by forcing Palestinians to go through gates of entry, you're going to reduce the bombings,"" Barnett said.
However, Mohammed Abed, a UW-Madison graduate student who is sponsoring the lecture, says he thinks the Israeli government has other intentions.
""What [the wall] does is drive deep into the West Bank territory and separate Palestinian villages from some of the most fertile farmland in the West Bank, and also from the main sources of water,"" he said.
Moreover, Abed said he believes the Israeli government is building the wall as part of an ongoing effort to seize Palestinian land.
""It's a continuation by other means of Israel's project of state expansion in the West Bank,"" he said. ""In many ways the wall is just another means of asserting Israel's claim to land that is by international law defined as occupied territory.""
Genia Daniels, a student at Madison Area Technical College who is sponsoring the lecture with Abed, said the speech will provide students with rare insight into the suffering of the Palestinian people.
""There are a lot of students who are unaware of exactly what's going on because mostly we just hear about suicide bombings and terrorist attacks and we don't really hear about ... the Palestinian perspective,"" Daniels said.
The speaker, Abdel Raheem Khatib, is an expert on the plight of Palestinian workers. For the past 18 years, he has served in the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions as the official representative for hotel and service workers in Jerusalem.
Three other speakers were scheduled to join Khatib, but could not reach the United States due to difficulties obtaining travel visas.
