- BIDDIYA, West Bank (Reuters)
-- The elderly Palestinian farmer wept silently as he sat by withering
olive trees and gazed through Israel's new electronic steel fence at land
his family has farmed for generations.
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- Palestinians on the West Bank say the fence, extended
under government plans announced on Wednesday, grabs land that would be
part of a future state.
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- Israel says it is a bulwark against Palestinian suicide
bombers who have killed hundreds of Israelis in a three-year-old uprising
for statehood.
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- "This land has been handed down from father to son
through the ages and our trees survived all the wars from Ottoman Empire
times to the modern day (1948 and 1967 wars with Israel). And now this,"
said 68-year-old Ibrahim Mohammed al-Tharf.
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- Part of that land is now scarcely accessible beyond the
fence. Israel has built yellow gates at intervals to give farmers access
to plots on the other side.
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- But there is no gate in the vicinity of farmland in Biddiya,
a village of 10,000 people. Residents said other gates they had gone to,
further away, were open for only limited periods.
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- Olive trees, a mainstay of the Palestinian farm economy,
have been felled in their tens of thousands to make way for the barrier
- in most places an electronic sensor fence and on a few stretches a concrete
wall.
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- "Mortal Danger: Military Zone. Anyone who passes
or damages this fence endangers his life," declares a sign at the
fence.
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- The next stage of the barrier will cut much deeper into
the West Bank in several places and is expected eventually to incorporate
several large Jewish settlements.
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- It will also absorb dozens of Palestinian villages, cutting
them off from mountain routes they have been using to reach markets and
public services since Israel blocked them from nearby highways to try to
contain Palestinian militants.
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- "We are being condemned to an open-air prison. Why
this collective punishment? No suicide bombers ever came from this area,"
said Jamil Ibrahim, mayor of Biddiya village.
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- Israel says the barrier can be moved or removed if it
reaches a peace accord with the Palestinians. The United States fears the
barrier is carving out a future border that will make it impossible to
create a viable Palestinian state.
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- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=qw1065172683285B253&set_id=1
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