GENEVA, 1 October 2003 — The controversial barrier being built by Israel through the West Bank amounts to the illegal annexation of Palestinian territory and must be condemned by the international community, a UN report said yesterday.
The report by the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, John Dugard, was immediately dismissed by Israel as politically biased. Dugard warned that the wall erected in recent months would incorporate “substantial areas” of the West Bank into Israel. “The evidence strongly suggests that Israel is determined to create facts on the ground amounting to de facto annexation,” the report said.
“Annexation of this kind, known as conquest in international law, is prohibited by the Charter of the United Nations and the Fourth Geneva Convention,” it added.
“The time has come to condemn the wall as an unlawful act of annexation in the same way that Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights has been condemned as unlawful,” Dugard said.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Premier-designate Ahmed Qorei is to name a reduced Cabinet of no more than 12 ministers, sources said yesterday, as a senior US official warned Israel that its settlement activity could undermine the country’s status as a Jewish democracy.
“President Arafat has agreed to Abu Ala’s proposal to declare a limited government and it should be declared by the end of this week,” a source said.
“There will be 10 to 12 ministers,” he added on condition of anonymity.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was looking to Qorei for firm signs that he was willing to take on the militants. “The cold, hard fact is that if the new prime minister does not make solid commitment to follow the road map and clamp down on terrorism, it is not clear how we will be able to move forward,” he said in a speech in Detroit.
