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MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 7/06:
Having to a considerable extent succeeding in colonizing the "occupied territories", especially the most important areas around Jerusalem and the most cultivatable areas along with the crucial water resources, the Israelis are now ready for more fences and barricades. Essentially the Israelis have lied and tricked their way to having some 30+ years control over the "occupied territories" since the 1967 war; allowing them to take much from the Palestinians as well as to bottle them up in "autonomous population areas" administered by a collaborating "Palestinian Authority". That's what the military occupation has really been all about. That's what the settlemetns are really all about. And since the Oslo "peace process" began, that's what the "by-pass" roads and all kinds of new restrictions and regulations have been all about -- dividing and controlling the 23% of Palestine west of the Jordan that didn't become Israel in 1948. Plus of course the Golan Heights.
The Israelis use the ruse of "security" to justify the new fences, barricades, trenches, etc. But the reality is that all these means are primarily designed with the goal of fencing the Palestinians in. Indeed, it's all part of a novel Middle Eastern apartheid to which the Israelis have applied all kinds of linguistical deceptions.
These two articles published yesterday help tell some of what is happening, even if they don't explain the real motivations and neo-apartheid consequences.
JERUSALEM (AP - 5 July) -- Israel has begun constructing fences, walls and trenches along the edge of the West Bank to protect against Palestinian attacks, officials said Thursday, while denying they amount to a new border. The barriers next to 10 Israeli communities will be about 35 miles long altogether and will be completed in the coming months, said Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and other territories, in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel did not build border fortifications, constructing Jewish settlements in the West Bank instead.
But during nine months of violence, Palestinian militants have crossed into Israeli cities and set off bombs. Also, towns on the Israeli side have come under fire from the West Bank.
The initiative for the protective structures came from residents who live just on the Israeli side of the line, Dror and community officials said.
The Defense Ministry approved the requests and is paying for most of the work. Dror said only budgetary restrictions have limited the extent of the projects. Officials refused to disclose the total cost.
The unmarked border between Israel and the West Bank, 180 miles long and known as the ``Green Line,'' is the armistice line from the 1948-49 war that followed the creation of Israel.
The Palestinians want to set up a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and demand removal of all the Jewish settlements. Israel insists the future of the settlements must be decided in negotiations. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said none would be dismantled.
Sharon chaired a meeting Wednesday about plans to beef up security along the Green Line. The walls and fences have raised the issue of whether Israel is drawing a new border, relinquishing the West Bank and abandoning the settlements, despite official government policy.
Dror said the approval of the local requests for protection has no political significance.
``I don't think a fence signifies a border,'' Dror said. ``There is not a political implication here, just a security implication.''
But Danny Atar, the chairman of the Gilboa regional council, where a seven-mile trench is being dug along the Green Line, disagreed.
``This will be a border in the future,'' Atar said. ``It's comfortable for them (the government) that we are deciding this for them. No one is being asked to agree or not, this is just reality.''
In addition to the trench in the Gilboa area, officials in the Emek Hefer and Lev Hasharon areas just north of Tel Aviv said they were building walls and fences -- some of them electrified -- with financial backing from the government.
``This is a change of policy, and we welcome it,'' said Lev Hasharon regional council chairman Yitzhak Yeshua.
[Ha'aretz 5 July 2001]:
For years Israel's policy has been to erase the Green Line. Now, local authorities along the "seam" in the densely populated heart of the country, are seizing the initiative and building what so-called "security walls" along that line.
In the Emek Hefer area, a wall a few hundred meters long was built in 1995, during the days of Yitzhak Rabin's administration, to prevent shooting from Sueika, a Palestinian village just over the line into the farming village.
Now, the local authority under Nahum Itzkovitz is extending the wall after a series of shooting incidents from the West Bank toward the village, and adding two more walls. The first wall will be four kilometers long, and will rise from 2.5 meters high to 3.5 meters high. The two other barriers will be a 4-km electric fence and a 2-km long fence. If the full plan is mplemented,in effect there will be a complete fence separating the entire Emek Hefer local authority from where it buttresses the West Bank. But Emek Hefer is not alone in the efforts by local authorities along the border to create physical separation between Israeli settlements and Palestinian settlements on opposite sides of the border.
A 60-km fence that will pass 10 regional authorities - Gilboa, Yoav, Lachish, Mate Yehuda, Emek Hefer, Lev Hasharon, South Sharon, Menashe, Alona and Megiddo, is now in the works. The regional authorities have committed themselves to pay for 20 percent of the cost, while the Agriculture Ministry and Defense Ministry are covering the rest. In some places, the walls and fences are being called "agricultural-security" fences, but it's a euphemism since everyone knows that the purpose of the barriers is to protect the Israeli side from shooting by the Palestinian side.
"Every settlement is in a battle for survival," says Yoav Regional Council chair Rani Trinan. "The definition may be an agricultural fence, and the financing may be done by the agriculture ministry, but it's actually camouflage for a security separation."
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon, a supporter of unilateral separation from the Palestinians, has no problem with that. "I want this project done in full. I don't mind that it creates separation, even if the government hasn't decided on separation because the situation on the ground justifies it."
Elsewhere, there are other moves along the Green Line to create physical barriers between Israel and Palestinian areas. In the Gilboa regional council, there are plans to start digging a deep trench to prevent crossing from Palestinian areas to Israel and 30 residents of the area, all of whom with combat experience, will man four observation posts. Regional Council chief Danny Atar says that "it's easier for the government when the initiative springs up from the grass roots, when reality dictates and they are dragged along without having to make declarations that are politically difficult for them."
In the Katzir area, near Wadi Ara, a "security promenade" is being planned that would separate the Jewish settlements from nearby Israeli-Arab villages where there was rioting last October, but also from nearby Palestinian controlled areas. In Katzir, the plan is to make the promenade a tourist spot that could be turned into a security measure, so as not to disturb the scenery.
And along the new Trans-Israel Highway being built from north to south, the transport minister has announced that some form of protective walls will be built where the road passes Qaliqiliya and Tul Karm. Security officials are now working on a plan for the proper kind of protective barrier in order to provide security to drivers on the new highway.
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| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/268.htm |