Wall casts shadow of suffering

2004-02-17 11:13

Jerusalem - More than 200 000 Palestinians are already suffering the humanitarian consequences of the separation barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank, according to the United Nations.

The barrier, whose legality is being debated by the world court in The Hague next week, is expected to eventually stretch more than 700km by the time it is completed at the end of 2005.

The 180km segment completed so far - a montage of razor wire, electronic fencing, concrete and ditches - has cut off villages from markets, medical services and schools in the northern West Bank.

It has resulted in the confiscation of 1 140 hectares of privately-owned Palestinian land and in the destruction of 102 320 trees, a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) found.

Fertile land

This land, which employs one quarter of the population there, is some of the West Bank's most fertile.

The barrier has also limited access to water in an area whose wells are some of the best of the western aquifer.

OCHA estimates that 16 200 hectares of "high-income Palestinian land" will be affected by the wall in the northern West Bank alone.

The UN organisation's field workers documented cases around the town of Qalqilya, where villages are severed from the main social, education, economic and health service centre as a result of the eight-metre-high wall that completely encircles the town.

"Whereas residents of these villages were once within three to five kilometres of the hospitals, schools and markets of Qalqilya, they now face a journey or more than 20km and the need to pass through an IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) checkpoint into Qalqilya," said OCHA.

OCHA drew similar conclusions about the barrier's impact around annexed east Jerusalem.

Some 274 000 Palestinians in 122 villages and towns will either live in closed areas - between the barrier and the 1949 armistice line, or Green Line, separating the West Bank from Israel - or in 12 enclaves entirely surrounded by the fence.

"Little consideration appears to have been given by the Israeli government to the wall's impact on Palestinian lives ... more people, unable to reach their land to harvest crops, graze animals or have the money to buy food will be hungry," it said.

OCHA predicted that 14.5 percent of West Bank land (excluding east Jerusalem) would be expropriated, should Israel stick to its route.

It said only 11 percent of the barrier's total length will run along the official Green Line boundary, as it will cut up to 22km into the West Bank to take in the Jewish settlement of Ariel, south of the northern Palestinian city of Nablus.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security advisor, Giora Eiland, has hinted that the final route could be adjusted after admitting that "the planning and the implementation of the fence had failed to foresee all the repurcussions the fence had on the life of innocent Palestinians".

- AFP