OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Celebrated British artist and former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters on Thursday, June 22, opened salvos against the Israeli separation wall in the occupied West Bank, sending a strong message of peace loud and clear.
"I believe we need this generation of Israelis to tear down the walls and make peace with their neighbors," the veteran British rocker told a crowd of around 50,000 fans in the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Neveh Shalom, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The veteran musician enjoys a strong following in the region where Pink Floyd's 1979 hit Another Brick in the Wall has become an anthem of resistance to the separation barrier Israel is building across the West Bank.
The 700km-long Israeli separation barrier is a mix of electronic fences and concrete walls that will eventually snake some 900 kilometers (540 miles) along the West Bank and leave even larger swathes of its territory on the Israeli side.
The wall has resulted in the confiscation of 11,4000 dunums (2,850 acres - 1,140 hectares) of privately-owned Palestinian land and in the destruction of 102,320 trees, according to a UN report.
It estimated that with the competition of the wall, 30 percent of the West Bank population, or some 680,000 people, will be "directly harmed".
After the International Court of Justice issued a landmark ruling branding the wall as illegal, the UN General Assembly asked Israel to tear it down and compensate the Palestinians affected.
Wall Down
"It may be a lot harder to get this one down but eventually it must happen otherwise there's no point being human beings," said the celebrated artist.
Prior to the concert, the 63-year-old Waters visited the wall, which the Palestinians see as another Israeli land grab.
He spray-painted the Pink Floyd lyrics "Tear down the wall" on the barrier and signed his initials, alongside graffiti left by hundreds of other international and Israeli anti-wall activists.
"It's a horrific edifice, this thing," Waters told reporters at a section of the barrier in occupied Palestinian city of Bethlehem.
"I've seen pictures of it, I've heard a lot about it but without being here you can't imagine how extraordinarily oppressive it is and how sad it is to see these people coming through these little holes," said the iconic artist.
"It's craziness…It may be a lot harder to get this one down but eventually it must happen otherwise there's no point being human beings," he affirmed.
Waters staged the famous concert "The Wall" along the Berlin wall to celebrate the reunification of Germany.
The British rocker refused to appear in the usual sites for outdoor concerts in Tel Aviv, citing his opposition to Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
He only agreed to perform in a hastily prepared outdoor venue next to the Jewish-Arab village of Neveh Shalom, near Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem), in an expression of support for co-existence between the Palestinians and Israelis.
Dozens of Palestinian artists have written to Waters urging him not to sing in Israel "at a time when Israel continues unabated with its colonial and apartheid designs to further dispossess, oppress and ultimately ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland."
Local fans who are opposed to Israel's separation wall have adapted the lyrics of Another Brick in the Wall to read: "We don't need no occupation. We don't need no racist wall."
In the hours before the performance, cars were backed up for many kilometers in all directions in one of Israel's biggest-ever traffic jams.
Waters split from Pink Floyd in the 1980s but rejoined the band for a one-off Live-8 concert last summer.
He is best known for his illustrious career spanning three decades with Pink Floyd as one of their chief singers, songwriter and bass player.
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