Construction of a section of the West Bank Wall in Bethlehem in 2004. Reuters Photographer
Israel has decided to expand the 30-foot wall that will enclose part of the West Bank for two decades. This controversial decision is presented as a response to the wave of attacks that have killed 14 people in four cities over the past three weeks. The security cabinet agreed during an emergency meeting on Saturday night to build 40 more kilometers of the controversial wall to replace a section of metal fence in the northwest of the occupied area, in an area where the attackers in the last two shootings were committed in the metropolitan area Tel Aviv. The new wall will have “additional protective measures and electronic components,” as Secretary of Defense ex-General Benny Gantz announced, “to improve security.”
In the midst of the Second Intifada (2000-2005), construction began on the so-called Security Barrier (a succession of high concrete walls with watchtowers, walls, fences and poles) that will encircle the West Bank for 708 kilometers. , with the aim of preventing attacks in Israel. It was to invade 85% of Palestinian territory, which meant the de facto annexation of 10% of the West Bank. For this reason, the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2004 declared the extension of the Green Line, which served as the border line until the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, to be illegal.
His tortuous line is yet to come. According to an estimate by the Times of Israel information portal, Israel has so far spent around 13,000 million shekels (3,700 million euros) after completing more than 60% of its route. The new section in the northwest of the West Bank is estimated by the Ministry of Defense at 360 million shekels (102 million euros).
Paradoxically, the barrier designed to stem armed attacks from the West Bank has left wide open spaces (such as west of Bethlehem and south of Hebron) through which Palestinians travel primarily to escape the misery of the Israeli labor market. It is also traversed by attackers from radical groups. “The security barrier has hundreds of gaps,” recalls Yossi Yehoshua, military correspondent for the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, “and about 30,000 Palestinians secretly cross it, the vast majority to work in Israel without permission.”
More than 100,000 West Bankers have valid work permits and another 20,000 are employed in settler settlements, but many more clandestinely cross the Separation Wall every day, themselves at risk of being shot by security forces. They risk their lives to work in agriculture or construction in Israel, where they earn more than three times what they earn in the West Bank.
Repairing the numerous breaches in the barrier does not appear to have been a priority for the Jewish state during the 12-year government of conservative Benjamin Netanyahu. Its final termination would, in practice, be tantamount to recognizing specific territorial boundaries for the future Palestinian state when negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been suspended since 2014. That’s what the parliamentarians of the Israeli extreme right say. “It will not be a security fence, but a border fence,” warned MP Orit Struck from the Religious Zionist Party, referring to the possible diplomatic consequences of building 40 new kilometers of the controversial nine meter high concrete wall.
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Armed Palestinian militants at the funeral of a protester killed by Israeli forces on Monday in Al Jader (Bethlehem).ABED AL HASHLAMOUN (EFE)
Since last March 22, when a Bedouin of Israeli nationality perpetrated the first attack in the town of Beersheva (south), military operations and incidents involving troops in the West Bank have claimed the lives of more than a dozen Palestinians between members of radical groups , attackers, suspects and the unarmed civilians, according to the Agence France Presse.
Military intervention after wave of attack
Most of the army’s operations against Islamic Jihad militants and the extremist armed wing of Fatah were concentrated in Jenin (north of the West Bank), where the perpetrators of the shootings recorded on March 29 in Bnei Brak (central Israel) and April 7 in the nearby city of Tel Aviv. Military raids intensified over the weekend following this latest attack in the heart of the country’s economic and cultural capital. The defense secretary acknowledged Monday that he had authorized his troops to “use unlimited force against suspected terrorists.”
Palestinian protests against the deployment of Israeli forces have led to a series of incidents with casualties in the middle of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and on the eve of the start of the Jewish Passover holiday. Two ultra-religious Israelis who entered Nablus (north) at dawn Monday morning were shot dead in a Palestinian attack as they went to pray at the tomb of Joseph, a Jewish holy site located in Palestinian Authority-controlled territory .
A 17-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by troops in Jenin on Sunday night. He was taken to hospital seriously injured with “a wound caused by an explosive bullet,” reported the Palestinian news agency Wafa, quoted by Efe. On the same day, in Hebron (southern West Bank), a woman was shot dead by soldiers who had tried to stab her. Another Palestinian woman died after being shot dead at a checkpoint in the Bethlehem area by pouncing soldiers. She was unarmed.
Palestinian believers cross the Wall to attend Ramadan prayers in Jerusalem on Friday in Bethlehem.ABED AL HASHLAMOUN (EFE)
A country surrounded by barriers
The construction of separation walls has extended to all borders of the Jewish state, which is on the way to becoming a country surrounded on all sides except by the sea to prevent infiltration by armed groups or undocumented immigrants. The northern border with Lebanon is sealed off with walls and fences. Also those of the Golan Heights, the Syrian plateau that has been occupied since 1967. Both northern countries are theoretically still at war with Israel, but the fence has also extended south, with Egypt, and east, with Jordan, Arab states with those who signed peace treaties. The Gaza Strip has also been surrounded and militarily blocked since the final withdrawal of the last Israeli settlers from the Palestinian coastal enclave in 2005.
Palestinians lament that the wall and other barriers in the West Bank have deprived them of much of their agricultural land while they have continued to face severe restrictions on their movement for more than half a century. According to Israeli peace NGO B’Tselem, the army controls dozens of roads (about 700 kilometers) in the West Bank on which the movement of Palestinian vehicles is banned or restricted, as well as permanent and temporary checkpoints inside the West Bank. The same is happening in the city of Hebron, which is divided into an Israeli zone and a Palestinian zone.
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