The Palestinian leadership accused Israel on Thursday of sabotaging peace efforts and threatening regional stability with its decisions to build fences deep inside the West Bank and new homes in the settlements.
The Israeli Cabinet on Wednesday okayed the extension of its barrier to seal off the West Bank, which would leave a gap in the most controversial area but erect a series of other fences to protect Jewish settlements which officials admitted would be linked up to the main barrier in a few months.
Speaking to reporters outside his Ramallah headquarters, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat described the barrier as the ”wall of racism”.
”This destroys and sabotages the peace process,” he said, also condemning the silence of the international community following Israel’s decision.
The final route of the barrier will slice up the western edge of the Palestinian territory. It will split villages in two and cut off from the rest of the West Bank tens of thousands of Palestinians and large swathes of some of the region’s most fertile
land.
The Palestinians charged that the decision was a betrayal of United States President George Bush’s two-state vision, enshrined in the so-called peace road map, by rendering unviable a future Palestinian state on the territory to the east of the barrier.
”With this decision, Israel deals a fatal blow to all efforts for peace, security and stability in the region,” said a spokesperson for the Palestinian leadership quoted by the official Wafa news agency.
The Palestinian Authority’s representative to the United Nations swiftly asked the Security Council to halt the construction of the barrier, which a UN official said this week amounted to illegal annexation or ”conquest”.
Palestinian anger mounted further when the Israeli Housing Ministry announced on Thursday that tenders had been issued for more than 550 homes in West Bank Jewish settlements.
”They have chosen a policy of settlements and dictation rather than peace and negotiations. It kills the idea of a two-state settlement,” top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.
Israel and the US had been in open disagreement over the construction of the fence, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was keen not to anger Washington further by ignoring its concerns.
Yet Wednesday’s Cabinet decision prompted an uneasy reaction from the US, the main promoter of the roadmap and a veto-holding member of the Security Council.
”Our views on the fence remain unchanged,” State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said. He reiterated the US position that the barrier will be ”problematic” if it intrudes into Palestinian territory as is planned.
”We’ll look closely at this decision.”
Under US law, the US must penalise Israel for settlements in Palestinian areas by withholding the exact amount spent on such activity from $9-billion in promised loan guarantees.
Washington has also said it may deduct from those guarantees the amount Israel spends on portions of the barrier that intrude into Palestinian territory.
Israel argues that the barrier is vital to its security.
Military sources announced on Thursday that, for the third time in two weeks, anti-Israeli bomb attacks were thwarted in the West Bank.
An explosives-laden vehicle was discovered by Israeli troops overnight at the southern entrance of the city of Nablus, the sources said, adding that sappers carried out a controlled explosion on it.
Eight Palestinians were also wounded when an Israeli tank fired a shell during an army incursion into the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah, Palestinian security and medical sources said.
During the raid, Israeli troops demolished a house and razed 1ha of Palestinian land, the security sources said. — Sapa-AFP