OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 2 August 2003 — US Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday Israel’s security barrier in the West Bank could undermine a peace road map, as Israeli troops fired rubber bullets at protesters trying to cut part of the fence.
Powell’s comments, published in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv, followed US President George W. Bush’s failure in talks on Tuesday to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stop building the barrier. Underscoring Palestinian anger stirred by the issue, several hundred protesters trying to breach the fence near the West Bank town of Tulkarm clashed with Israeli soldiers, witnesses said.
A spokesman for the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement said seven of its activists — four Britons and three Americans — and two Palestinians were hit by rubber bullets but none was seriously wounded. The army confirmed using “non-lethal means to disperse the crowd”.
“...When the fence is no longer just on (Israeli) land...it starts to infringe and take over Palestinian land,” Powell told Maariv. “And you see it going in ways that will make it very difficult to get to the next phases of the road map.”
Around 15,000 Palestinians attended a rally in the northern West Bank town of Nablus yesterday to commemorate slain militants and protest Israel’s construction of the barrier.
Men, women and children gathered at the city’s main soccer stadium to pay tribute to Jamal Mansour and Jamal Salim, killed with another six Palestinians in an Israeli attack on July 31, 2001.
A local Hamas leader delivered a brief speech, threatening to end the three-month suspension of anti-Israeli attacks.
