Israel building more walls - one down the middle of the road

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/

Walls and Checkpoints
The Nightmare Comes True

-snip-

Below me was a narrow road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degrees centigrade in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging towards the checkpoint. Very soon this road will be transformed. It will be widened to three lanes and be reserved for Israelis: on both sides of it, 8-meter high walls will spring up. It will allow the settlers of the Jordan valley to reach Tel-Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either side will be cut off from each other.

-snip-

This is about to stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on to Nablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the 8-meter wall is due to start any minute now--not across the road, but along the middle of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants of a-Ram, east of the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also from all the townships and villages to their west--their relatives, the schools which thousands of their children attend, their cemetery and their places of work. A small part of a-Ram remains outside the wall and will be cut off from the main part of the town in which they live.

-snip-

A few kilometers to the west of a-Ram lies a group of villages centered around Bidou (where five Palestinians have been killed so far in protests against the wall). This area is rapidly becoming another enclave, completely surrounded by a separate barrier. The only way out will be a tunnel to be built under road No. 443--the settlers' road of which the section I mentioned before will become part. All existing roads to Bidou have long since been cut off by trenches or piles of dirt, one can enter only at one spot controlled by a checkpoint. This will cease to exist.

-snip-

Practically no Israeli has any idea about all this. It may be happening one kilometer from his home (in Jerusalem, for example), but it might as well be on far side of the moon. The media are not interested, nor is the world.

-snip-

And sometime in the future this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin wall, which, evil as it was, was much less inhuman. As always, after much suffering, the human spirit will prevail.
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empire america funds Israel and backs the insane Sharon gang

Israel's media is bought and paid for just like ours, bought and paid for by the same suits.

speaking of walls: in Iraq the Green Zone is surrounded by a wall.

[Catfight]

1. Perfect, someone should do a commerical with Reagan demanding

walls to be torn down, and another of all the walls going back up with Bush. Worst president EVER!

[Liberal Classic]

2. Well, the Berlin Wall was more for

Keeping people in than keeping people out.

[LiberalVoice]

3. Israel is a Democracy my ass!

Fuck Sharon!

[Gimel]

5. expectation

to get a voter registration card?

[papau]

4. the 11/05 completion date for the wall - Is this only the Eastern Wall?

Or do they plan to have both the Eastern and Western Walls done by then with Palestinians in Swiss like Cantons separated by the walls?

[Gimel]

6. A political deal

Sharon indicated to Netanyahu that the separation fence in the Ariel area would be completed before the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is finished.

Haaretz

[papau]

7. Thanks for the link - looks like Eastern Fence only -with no link to Ariel

Ariel is semi-Walled appears to be the only promised construction in this phase (granted that this must seen as temporary awaiting final status talks - which should be done well before the 2007 land taking date) - but if allowed to stand it is a taking of a 54 sq miles area (150 sq kilometers) on the "wrong side" of the 67 green line.

I liked that some settlers have rejected the fence (Kedumim area ) and that there are legal obstacles to the construction in the Immanuel area, but I suspect the folks in Kedumin just want all of the West Bank - sigh....

[Scurrilous]

8. Protesters clash with troops at W. Bank fence building site

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/439867.html

<snip>

"Construction of a section of the West Bank separation fence near the settlement of Ariel was halted Wednesday, as hundreds of Israeli and Palestinians protesters clashed with security forces near the village of Iskaka.

A military liaison official told area residents that construction work on the section would continue at a later date.

Border policemen and soldiers who were securing equipment at the site fired tear gas at demonstrators. According to witnesses, protesters shattered the windshield of one of the bulldozers."