{"id":7822,"date":"2012-01-27T15:17:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T14:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7822"},"modified":"2012-01-27T15:19:08","modified_gmt":"2012-01-27T14:19:08","slug":"how-many-peace-walls-are-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=7822","title":{"rendered":"How many peace walls are there?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Peace walls developed in Northern Ireland shortly after sectarian tensions broke out into violence in 1969 but, since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, I think that most people outside Northern ireland have assumed that the violence has ended and the peace walls have come down. In fact, dissident Republicans continue to mount violent actions and, as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peace_lines\">this Wikipedia page<\/a> spells out, there are still some 40 peace walls separating Catholic\/Republican communities from Protestant\/Unionist ones.<\/p>\n<p>In another assessment, there are apparently a total of 88 peace walls and barriers and you can view photographs of 15 of the walls <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uk\/gallery\/2012\/jan\/22\/belfast-peace-wall\">here<\/a>. Surprisingly around a third have been erected since the formal end of terrorist activities. However, a\u00a0\u00a32m fund aimed at bringing down the peace walls by building confidence between communities has just been announced by the International Fund for Ireland, as explained <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-northern-ireland-16603481\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Northern Ireland is not unique in approaching issues of inter-ethnic conflict by erecting a wall or barrier. On my trip to Israel, I kept obtaining glimpses of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier\">\u201cthe wall\u201d<\/a> between israel and the West Bank. Israelis call this \u201cthe separation fence\u201d or \u201cthe security fence\u201d, while most Palestinians call it \u201cthe racial segregation wall\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure that around the world there are all sorts of physical barriers of this kind. The English poet Robert Frost once wrote a poem called <a href=\"http:\/\/hedgebritannia.wordpress.com\/2011\/03\/08\/mending-wall\/\">&#8220;Mending Wall&#8221;<\/a> which I studied at school. In that he famously wrote that &#8220;<em>Good fences make good neighbours&#8221;<\/em> . Is that true?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peace walls developed in Northern Ireland shortly after sectarian tensions broke out into violence in 1969 but, since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, I think that most people outside Northern ireland have assumed that the violence has ended and the peace walls have come down. In fact, dissident Republicans continue to mount violent actions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7822"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7834,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7822\/revisions\/7834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}