Israel's "defence" ministry announced new plans on October 24 for the route of "apartheid wall" that would eventually cut off the Jordan River Valley from the West Bank, which would mean annexing the main food basket for Palestinians.
A senior Israeli official said the Jordan River Valley, at the eastern edge of the West Bank, must remain under Israeli control. A plan for the wall that would cut the valley off from the rest of the West Bank has been approved.
According to Israel's own statistics, 19 illegal Israeli settlements exist in the Jordan River Valley, all of them located between the Palestinian towns of Jericho and Jiftliq.
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, when asked about the plan in a television interview, confirmed its existence but gave no details about exactly when or where it would be built.
On October 21, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Israel stop construction of the wall and tear down the sections already completed, but Israel rejected the non-binding resolution. The resolution passed 144 in favour and only four against (including Israel and the United States; Australia was one of only 12 that abstained).
Israel has already finished 150 kilometres of the wall's eventual 300+kms; It is expected to be finished by the end of the year.
"This fence allows Sharon to realise his dream to divide up the Palestinian population into small groups", said Dror Etkes of the Israeli group Peace Now.
Meanwhile, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on October 26 slammed Israel's military demolition of three multi-storey residential buildings in the Gaza Strip city of al Zahra as a "catastrophe". More than 2000 Palestinians were rendered homeless.
Before dawn, residents awoke to the sound of rumbling tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Without any notice or enough time to salvage belongings, hundreds of families were forced at gunpoint to evacuate their homes before they were reduced to a pancake of rubble and steel, witnesses said.
The executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) also vehemently condemned the destruction of homes — close to the illegal Israeli settlement of Netzarim — and called upon the international community to rebuke Israel's vast demolition spree.
The destruction of the residential buildings, which housed hundreds of Palestinian security personnel and their families, was the largest since the intifada erupted some three years ago.
Israel's continuing levelling of Palestinians' homes has been widely condemned by human rights groups and governments as a violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law. Article 53 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention forbids "any destruction by the occupying power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons".
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, close to 12,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by the Israeli military's demolitions in the Gaza Strip alone since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000.
Chief Palestinian negotiator and cabinet minister Saeb Erekat called the demolitions a "war crime" and demanded that the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators — the UN, US, Russia and the European Union — to intervene immediately to stop what he called "Israel's crimes".
[From the Palestine Media Centre.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 5, 2003.
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