MIDEAST: Barrier May Separate A Little Less

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jun 24 2006 (IPS) - A decision by Israel’s new defence minister to review the route of the West Bank separation barrier, in order to limit settlement expansion and ease the daily lives of Palestinians, is likely to impact on the delineation of the border that ultimately separates Israelis and Palestinians.

Labour Party leader Amir Peretz, who took over at the defence ministry last month, believes the route of the barrier should be dictated by security and not political considerations. He is concerned that the barrier has been used as a means of expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Shaul Arieli, a retired colonel who conducts tours of the barrier and has given testimony on the matter to the High Court, told IPS that “all throughout” the planning stages there have been deviations in the route with the goal of appropriating West Bank land where plans exist for the future expansion of Jewish settlements.

This is exactly what scares Palestinians – that the barrier will ultimately become a border and leave them with a territorially disjointed state in the West Bank.

The daily Haaretz newspaper, which first reported Peretz’s intention to review the route of the barrier, quoted Israeli human rights organisations saying there are at least 10 places where the route is not determined by security considerations but is aimed at expanding Jewish settlements.

If Peretz gets his way and security concerns dictate – Israel says the barrier is to deter Palestinian suicide bombers – then the route could shift closer to the line that divided Israel and the West Bank on the eve of the 1967 Mideast War, before Israel captured the territories. This is the line the Palestinians want as the border of a future state, not a line dictated by the route of the barrier, which dips into the West Bank.

Arieli says the areas where the barrier is likely to shift as a result of Peretz’s decision are near the largest West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, in the vicinity of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, and near the settlement of Ariel deep in the northern West Bank.

But it is unclear whether Peretz’s review will change the route of the barrier in Jerusalem, where imposing eight-metre high concrete slabs snake through Arab areas, separating neighbours and making it difficult for children to get to their schools.

In Jerusalem, the political motivations of those who viewed the barrier as a means of expanding Israel’s control over the divided city are plain to see: some 200,000 residents of Arab East Jerusalem are on the Israeli side of the barrier, making a mockery of the claim that it is solely security considerations that dictate the route here.

By shifting the barrier, says Arieli, “it is possible to ensure that Arab neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem like Sur Baher and Beit Hanina are outside (the barrier). By doing that you will ensure that another 100,000 Arab residents are not on the Israeli side.”

But when it comes to Jerusalem, adds Arieli, “changing the route is not just the decision of the defence minister. This is an area where Israeli law applies and so changing the route of the fence there will require a government decision.”

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has indicated that the separation barrier will serve as the temporary border between Israel and the Palestinians if he ultimately forges ahead with his plan for a unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank.

At a press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair during a trip to London earlier this month, he hinted that Israel could withdraw from some 90 percent of the West Bank, with large settlement blocs remaining on the Israeli side of the barrier.

A cabinet minister intimately familiar with the plans for a unilateral pullout says that Israel could withdraw from as much as 91.5 percent of the West Bank. Arieli says the changes that would come about as a result of Peretz’s review of the barrier would further reduce the amount of West Bank territory that would remain in Israel’s hands after a unilateral withdrawal, to around 7 percent.

But the Palestinians are not prepared to countenance any West Bank land remaining in Israeli hands. They insist that the barrier is a land grab by Israel that prejudices the outcome of final status negotiations, leaving them with a shrunken stretch of land on which to build a state.

The barrier has also created daily hardships for Palestinians, especially farmers who have been cut off from their land by the barbed wire fences, patrol roads, observation posts and electronic devices that make up the barrier, which is approximately 60 metres wide in most areas. (The concrete, walled sections, like in Jerusalem, make up about 5 percent of the entire barrier.)

Israel says it is building the barrier- when completed it will snake along a 650-km path through the West Bank – to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of its cities.

Israeli leaders and military officials say the barrier has played a key role in reducing attacks. According to one statistic released by the military, suicide bombings dropped by 90 percent between 2002 and 2005, in part due to the barrier. Despite Israel’s assertion that the barrier is motivated by self-defence, it has come in for sustained international criticism. In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that construction of the barrier was “contrary to international law” and that it should be torn down.

Israel dismissed that decision, but successive governments have not been able to ignore the decisions of Israel’s High Court of Justice, which has ruled in favour of Palestinian petitioners in several cases, forcing the state to reroute the barrier in some areas.

The decision this week by Peretz to order a review comes just days after the High Court ordered his ministry to reroute a five kilometre section of the barrier near the West Bank city of Qalqilya because it was being used to expand the nearby Jewish settlement of Tzufin.

The court ruled that political factors and not just security considerations were taken into account when determining the route of the fence around Tzufin. There are several more petitions pending from Palestinians and Israeli human rights organisations.

If Israel’s initial motivation in building the barrier was to enhance its security, its dramatic political implications cannot be ignored. And when Peretz says that security considerations must dictate the final route of the barrier, Olmert’s declarations that the barrier will serve as a provisional border between Israel and the Palestinians also ring loud.

Peretz’s “security” motivations also ultimately have a political end: the defence minister’s decision to review the route of the barrier, says Shaul Arieli, “is to establish a route that does not undermine future prospects for a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.”