Israel To Build Fence Around Jerusalem

http://www.jordantimes.com/mon/news/news1.htm

The Israeli Cabinet gave the green light Sunday to construction of a temporary fence around parts of Jerusalem and modified the route of its West Bank separation barrier, moving forward with interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's plan to quickly define Israel's final borders.
Palestinians criticised the moves, saying that Israel is imposing its will over disputed land and trying to strengthen its claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem.

The Cabinet voted to put up the temporary fencing around areas of Jerusalem abutting the West Bank, plugging gaps in the unfinished larger barrier while the final route is worked out. It also rerouted an area near Ariel, a major settlement deep in the West Bank.

“We must make a supreme effort to complete the security barrier wherever possible,” Olmert told the ministers.

“The decisions we take today will allow us to complete the construction of the fence very quickly in critical areas, and therefore improve our ability to thwart attempted attacks.” Israel began construction of the barrier four years ago, saying it needed to keep suicide bombers out of the country. Olmert says the barrier will serve as the basis for Israel's final border with the West Bank.

Olmert, whose Kadima Party won March 28 elections, says he hopes to reach an agreed settlement with the Palestinians but will move forward unilaterally if he concludes there is no negotiating partner on the other side. Olmert is in the final stages of forming a coalition government.

Following last month's swearing-in of the Hamas-led Palestinian government, unilateral Israeli action appears increasingly likely. Hamas refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist.

Israel began building the 760-kilometre system of electronic fences, concrete walls and trenches after hundreds of Israelis were killed in suicide bombings and other Palestinian attacks. A Palestinian who carried out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv two weeks ago reportedly entered Israel through the porous Jerusalem area.

The barrier, which is about halfway complete, dips into the West Bank at several points, and Palestinians call it a landgrab. Olmert recently said he wants the entire barrier completed by the end of this year.

The section around Jerusalem is especially contentious because of conflicting claims to the city.

Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians view the mostly Arab eastern sector as capital of a future Palestinian state that they hope will comprise all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as well. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war.

Palestinians said the latest Israeli move would make life tougher for West Bank residents who have crucial ties to Jerusalem, and for Arab residents of the city who have commercial and family links with the West Bank.

“They are keeping Palestinians outside the city in an effort to create facts on the ground and preempt a final agreement between the sides,” said Khalil Tafakji, a Palestinian cartographer.

The present gaps around Jerusalem are partly due to dozens of legal challenges to the barrier's route filed by Palestinians and Israeli civil rights groups.

The temporary fencing around Jerusalem will disrupt the lives of thousands of Palestinians who enter the city daily for jobs, services or schooling, rights groups say.

In Sunday's meeting, the Cabinet also rejigged the planned route of the barrier in the area of the Jewish settlement of Ariel. The changes would put 30,000 Palestinians on the “Palestinian” side of the enclosure.

The settlement block is the deepest inside the West Bank, and the Cabinet's action indicated that Israel intends to retain West Bank land where the Ariel cluster is sited.

Olmert has repeatedly said that he intends to keep Ariel inside Israel's final borders. Due to heavy US pressure, Israel has not yet begun construction of the barrier there, about 16 kilometres inside the West Bank. In the interim, Israel has begun building a temporary fence around Ariel.

Tafakji said modifying the barrier's route was the Israeli government's way to dodge legal challenges without waiting for the supreme court to resolve them.

“They are preempting the court rulings,” he said.

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem called the planned route of the barrier a “blatant political route which does not provide the promised security and violates human rights.” Last week, Olmert reached a power-sharing agreement with the centrist Labour Party and on Sunday Labour's central committee approved the deal and endorsed Labour leader Amir Peretz's nomination of himself as defence minister.

Leading Labourites, including former generals who had eyed the defence post for themselves, sought to have their party's seven ministerial posts allocated by internal party ballot. The proposal failed, giving Peretz authority to appoint the ministers.

Monday, May 1, 2006