GAZA CITY, 31 July 2003 — The Palestinian Authority yesterday accused Israel of lacking commitment to the peace road map by pushing ahead with the construction of a West Bank Wall, as the two sides were yesterday to debate more troop withdrawals.
PA security chief Mohammed Dahlan said a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House that he would forge ahead with the project “shows Israel is not thinking seriously about implementing the road map” backed by the United States and international community.
“We refuse this wall, because it has no security purpose. This wall will only increase hatred between the Palestinian and Israeli sides because it is a racist, separation wall,” Dahlan told AFP. Sharon told reporters in Washington on Tuesday that work on what he termed “the security fence” between the West Bank and Israel would continue, despite criticism from the United States.
And he told NBC television in an interview broadcast yesterday that it was “a good fence (which) will bring, I believe, good friendship”. Palestinians view the barrier as an attempt by Israel to set in stone the borders of a future Palestinian state and have been angered by its route which cuts into their territory.
“If the wall is about security, why does it absorb Palestinian villages?” asked Dahlan. British Prime Minister Tony Blair also said his government had “expressed our own misgivings” to Israel about the cordon. “What we don’t want is a situation where, de facto, the boundaries are changed, because that would mean that a peace settlement is less likely,” Blair told a press conference in London.
Dahlan’s strong words came ahead of talks with Israel’s Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz with whom he was to discuss the terms of Israeli troop withdrawals from two more West Bank cities. The talks were to be held in Tel Aviv last night, sources said.
He was expected to urge Israel to first pull its troops out of Ramallah, where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has in effect been confined by Israeli troops ever since December 2001. “Ramallah first and then Qalqilya or Nablus,” a source close to Dahlan told AFP.
The wall’s construction is supported across the Israeli political spectrum but its routing has sparked tensions domestically. The Israeli left holds that the security barrier should faithfully follow the Green Line — the armistice line which divided Israel and the Palestinian territories between 1949 and 1967 — whereas extreme right-wingers want it to shift eastward to absorb as many West Bank Jewish settlements as possible.
Opinion polls show that a majority of Israelis are in favor of it, though paradoxically the religious right, including settlers, is opposed, saying that the biblical Israel includes the West Bank (known by Jews as Judea and Samaria) and should not be divided. The barrier dips deep into occupied Palestinian territory at several points in order to protect settlements and leaves several Palestinian villages cut off from the rest of the West Bank.
Its controversial route has also sparked a semantic battle: Israel labeled it a security fence, or a “seam zone,” terms which fail to reflect the magnitude of the work at hand.
Palestinians have dubbed it a “wall,” a clear reference to the Berlin Wall and a terminology only accurate in parts of the northern West Bank.
US President George W. Bush temporarily decided on the Palestinian term last Friday when he criticized its construction after meeting Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas in Washington.
“I think the wall is a problem... It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and the Israelis ... with a wall snaking through the West Bank,” Bush said. But Israel says the “fence” has no political connotations but “aims solely to provide security,” as explained on its Defense Ministry’s website.
Standing next to Bush Sharon declared publicly construction would continue. “The security fence will continue to be built with every effort to minimize the infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian population,” Sharon told reporters at the White House.
Speaking after his meeting with Sharon, Bush made little reference to the controversial fence, other than acknowledging it was “a sensitive issue” which would continue to be discussed.
But White House officials later denied allegations the president had changed his tune over the wall.
A senior Israeli official at the talks said there was no pressure exerted on Sharon over the security barrier.
“In the whole conversation, there were no differences of opinion... There was no atmosphere of disagreement in the meeting,” he said, saying Israel made it very clear construction of the barrier would continue.
The barrier is also expected to cut annexed east Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank, although the Palestinians are hoping the eastern part of holy city will be the capital of their future state.
