On 9 November, International Day against the Walls, the indiscriminate siege against Gaza turned 33 days. It is impossible to denounce the world’s walls without talking about Palestine. Since 2007, Gaza has suffered a blockade of land, sea and air by the Zionist State of Israel, cutting electricity and without the possibility of receiving medical assistance and drinking water. The Palestinians cannot leave or freely enter their territory. Moreover, since 7 October they have had no access to basic supplies.

Although the Gaza Strip is occupied with siege and genocide, the ethnic cleansing policy being pursued by the Palestinian population has been developing for over 75 years. In addition to the hundreds of checkpoints separating the cities of Palestine, the physical and mobile barriers to the roads and so on, we must remember that in the West Bank there are only over 70 kilometres of roads that the Palestinians cannot travel. Since 2002, the State of Israel has built over 700 kilometres of walls and fences in the occupied Palestinian territory. Ethnic cleansing and apartheid is a process organized by the Zionist State through military, political, administrative and cultural mechanisms that affect not only the mobility of the Palestinians but also their fundamental civil rights. Permanent redundancies and forced relocations, arbitrary and administrative detentions, cuts in access to jobs, torture and ill-treatment, criminalisation and political persecution of humanitarian and solidarity organisations with Palestine, and other permanent aggressions imposed by the segregation regime, are an infinite list.

The Zionist State of Israel and the normalization of genocide and apartheid are an unfiltered materialization of the racist policies that attack the whole world. In 2023, 2,357 people were killed in the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe and more than 28,000 people have been counted since the establishment of the register. Another genocide caused by the European Union’s racist and colonial migratory policies was cited by Josep Borrell in the water wall that would protect the European Garden. To this "water wall" must be added the barriers of Ceuta and Melilla, another example of bloody walls that protect the "strong Europe". Nothing has yet been done for the murder of 37 sub-Saharan people killed on the border between Melilla and Morocco, nor for 14 deaths in Tarajal, Ceuta.

Today we can count more than 60 walls separating borders or limiting occupied territories. Behind these walls are racist policies that defend certain privileges at the expense of the persistence of inequalities and poverty. At the last NATO summit in Madrid in 2022, the member countries that make up this alliance considered migration as a hybrid threat. This would justify the militarization of borders through troops, boats, aircraft, drones and digital custodians patrolling land, sea and air. In this mission, FRONTEX, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, which over the last ten years has quadrupled its budget and increased expenditure on return operations by EUR 47 million, has become the para-police structure responsible for the systematic violation of the fundamental rights of migrants.

But we do not just want to talk about borders between countries. Some territories and peripheries in large cities have also been subjected to social control measures that exclude people who are rationalized, migrated and without resources. In our cities we can find barriers that act under the same colonial and racist logic. In Bilbao we can remember the "racist barriers of shame" placed on the courts of the Atxuri neighborhood, which prevent young migrants living on the street from spending the night covered. These barriers move people to invisible, even more vulnerable places, in order to exclude and deny the privilege of visible areas. By way of example, we would like to recall the case of Atxuri Harrera, a member who suffered the murder. The municipal police had to leave the Atxuri courts and head to the slopes of Mount Artxanda, where he suffered an attack. Many migrants and racists live in a street situation identified and evicted by the police.

Maintaining these physical and symbolic limits would not be possible without the intervention of private capital. In Euskal Herria, almost EUR 2 million from the Basque institutions have gone to the company of Ilan Arzoolan, a former Israeli Mossad agent. With this company, the institutions have signed arms procurement contracts and have tertiarised security tasks. Another example of the coexistence of apartheid and genocide is the Basque railway company CAF, which is responsible for building a tram line in the occupied territory of Palestine.

That is why, within the framework of the Day Against the Walls, SOS Racism of Bizkaia, BDS Bizkaia and Atxuri Harrera we have joined our struggles to call for the destruction of all the physical and mental walls and barriers that exist on our planet and demand respect for the freedom of peoples and people to decide their future and ensure a dignified life. Furthermore, in a claim such as the present one, we cannot fail to call for the end of the occupation and colonization of Palestine. Furthermore, we call for the boycott of Israel and demand that the Zionist State break the fire quickly, that the apartheid system be put to an end and that the weapons be seized.

Shaila Fernández Santos, BDS Bizkaia

Karen Brunel Saldias, SOS Racism de Bizkaia

Luis Rodríguez Menarguen, Atxuri Reception