- JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is continuing to defy Washington over the ongoing
project for a massive fence dividing Israel from the West Bank, which is
strongly opposed by the Palestinians and not fully accepted even within
his own camp.
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- A vote slated to take place Tuesday in the Israeli parliament
to decide on extra funding to complete the structure was postponed until
further notice, a Knesset spokesman told AFP.
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- Public radio said the delay was caused by members of
Sharon's Likud party, who defied their leader's call Monday to approve
the 750-million-shekel (170-million-dollar) package and demanded the route
of the fence be further discussed.
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- On Monday, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz confirmed the
350-kilometre (215-mile) fence -- aimed at preventing infiltrations by
Palestinian militants -- would penetrate some 15 kilometres (10 miles)
into the West Bank to take in Ariel, one of the largest Jewish settlements
in the West Bank.
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- According to public radio, Mofaz argued that the fence
-- which he said would cost 2.2 million dollars a kilometre (1,100 yards)
-- was "vital" for Israel's security.
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- If it was not completed, the deployment of extra army
reservists would be even more costly, he warned.
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- The fence loosely follows the 1967 Green Line division
between Israel and the West Bank, but it dips deep into occupied Palestinian
territory at several points in order to protect settlements.
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- It also leaves several Palestinian villages cut off from
the rest of the West Bank.
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- The Palestinians accuse Israel of using the fence to
unilaterally determine the borders of a future Palestinian state -- scheduled
under the US-backed peace roadmap to be in place in 2005 -- and of wanting
to "ethnically cleanse" the West Bank with a de facto annexation
of its most fertile regions.
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- Construction of the fence was launched in June 2002.
It is also expected to cut annexed east Jerusalem off from the rest of
the West Bank and a first 145-kilometre (90-mile) section is due for completion
in July.
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- Even though prospects for peace are better than they
have been for years, Sharon told his followers Monday that the best possible
fence must be built as quickly as possible.
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- Opinion polls show that a majority of Israelis are in
favour of it, though paradoxically the religious right, including settlers,
are opposed, saying that the biblical Israel includes the West Bank and
should not be divided.
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- US President George W. Bush's national security advisor
Condoleezza Rice, on a visit to Jerusalem at the end of June, asked Sharon
to revise the line of the fence.
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- Sharon refused to compromise but assured Rice that it
was not a frontier.
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- A second section, of some 60-70 kilometres (36-42 miles),
is under construction in the northeast of the West Bank, to prevent infiltrations
in the north of the Jordan Velley.
-
- "We envisage that this barrier will run along the
length of the Palestinian territories," government spokesman Avi Pazner
told AFP.
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- The Israeli daily Maariv, for its part, said that the
various meanderings of the fence, which in one part near Jenin consists
of a high concrete wall, would bring its total length to between 800 and
900 kilometres (490 and 550 miles).
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- At the price per kilometre given by Mofaz this would
cost a staggering 1.8 billion dollars, at a time when Israel is in severe
economic straits.
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- Palestinian prime minister Mahmud Abbas will raise the
question of the fence when he has his first White House meeting with Bush
on Friday. And Bush is almost certain to raise it with Sharon at their
talks four days later.
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- A foreign diplomat, however, said that Sharon still appeared
to be ambivalent.
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- "Sharon was elected at the beginning of 2001. So
he has been around two and a half years and he hasn't built the wall. So
I think he is delaying it as much as possible ... hoping he can push it
to the back burner."
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