JERUSALEM, 25 August 2005 — Israel has issued orders to seize Palestinian land to build its wall along a route that would effectively annex the West Bank’s largest Jewish settlement to Jerusalem, the Justice Ministry said yesterday, a day after Israel completed its evacuation of 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinians charged that Israel issued the confiscation orders while world attention was riveted on the forcible removal of settlers and tearing down of their homes by Israeli bulldozers.
Besides objecting to loss of land, Palestinians said that the wall would cut them off from the part of Jerusalem they claim for a state and reinforce Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s intention to solidify Israel’s grip on its main West Bank settlement blocs after the Gaza pullout. The settlement, Maaleh Adumim, 5 kilometers (3 miles) east of Jerusalem in the Judean desert, has about 30,000 residents. Sharon has said repeatedly that it will remain in Israel even after a final peace accord with the Palestinians.
Israel says the wall is needed to keep bombers from entering the country. When complete, the 680-kilometer (425-mile) complex of walls, electric fences, trenches and barbed wire is expected to include about eight percent of the West Bank on the “Israeli” side.
Amos Gil, executive director of Ir Amim, an Israeli settlement monitoring group, said the Maaleh Adumim barrier confiscation would seize about 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) of land.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz approved the order after a legal review, the Justice Ministry said. “Such decisions will only serve to undermine any efforts to resume negotiations,” said a senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat.
The United States issued a statement that implied criticism of the Israeli move. The wall “is a problem to the extent that prejudges a final borders, confiscates Palestinian property or imposes further hardship on the Palestinian people,” the statement said.
Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem for a state, complaining that the wall route unilaterally sets a border. Palestinians have praised Israel’s pullout from Gaza and the West Bank but insist it must be followed by an exit from the rest of the territory.
Yesterday, Israel proposed a dual crossing between Gaza and Egypt, defense officials said. The current Rafah crossing would allow for free exit of people and goods, and a new crossing would be built at the Gaza-Egypt-Israel border for entry under Israeli supervision. Palestinians rejected the idea.
The issue of the Rafah crossing is seen as critical to the future of Gaza. The crossing is Gaza’s only land link to the outside world without passing through Israel, which plans to maintain control over the territory’s Mediterranean seacoast and its airspace.
Also yesterday, Israel said it has reached a deal with Egypt on deploying hundreds of Egyptian border guards along the southern border of the Gaza Strip.
But a source close to the Egyptian presidency said some finetuning remained before the deal was done.
“We have reached total agreement with the Egyptians, there only remains the green light from the government and the Knesset (parliament) to be able to organize the signing ceremony,” Gen. Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, told military radio.
However an official close to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told AFP that no final deal on the deployment of Egyptian guards had been agreed upon.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council yesterday welcomed the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank and urged the resumption of peace talks aimed at establishing an independent and viable Palestinian state.
— With input from agencies
