- JERUSALEM (AFP) -- More than
200 000 Palestinians are already suffering the humanitarian consequences
of the separation barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank, according
to the United Nations.
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- The barrier, whose legality is being debated by the world
court in The Hague next week, is expected to eventually stretch more than
700km by the time it is completed at the end of 2005.
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- The 180km segment completed so far - a montage of razor
wire, electronic fencing, concrete and ditches - has cut off villages from
markets, medical services and schools in the northern West Bank.
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- It has resulted in the confiscation of 1 140 hectares
of privately-owned Palestinian land and in the destruction of 102 320 trees,
a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
(OCHA) found.
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- Fertile land
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- This land, which employs one quarter of the population
there, is some of the West Bank's most fertile.
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- The barrier has also limited access to water in an area
whose wells are some of the best of the western aquifer.
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- OCHA estimates that 16 200 hectares of "high-income
Palestinian land" will be affected by the wall in the northern West
Bank alone.
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- The UN organisation's field workers documented cases
around the town of Qalqilya, where villages are severed from the main social,
education, economic and health service centre as a result of the eight-metre-high
wall that completely encircles the town.
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- "Whereas residents of these villages were once within
three to five kilometres of the hospitals, schools and markets of Qalqilya,
they now face a journey or more than 20km and the need to pass through
an IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) checkpoint into Qalqilya," said OCHA.
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- OCHA drew similar conclusions about the barrier's impact
around annexed east Jerusalem.
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- Some 274 000 Palestinians in 122 villages and towns will
either live in closed areas - between the barrier and the 1949 armistice
line, or Green Line, separating the West Bank from Israel - or in 12 enclaves
entirely surrounded by the fence.
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- "Little consideration appears to have been given
by the Israeli government to the wall's impact on Palestinian lives ...
more people, unable to reach their land to harvest crops, graze animals
or have the money to buy food will be hungry," it said.
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- OCHA predicted that 14.5 percent of West Bank land (excluding
east Jerusalem) would be expropriated, should Israel stick to its route.
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- It said only 11 percent of the barrier's total length
will run along the official Green Line boundary, as it will cut up to 22km
into the West Bank to take in the Jewish settlement of Ariel, south of
the northern Palestinian city of Nablus.
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- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security
advisor, Giora Eiland, has hinted that the final route could be adjusted
after admitting that "the planning and the implementation of the fence
had failed to foresee all the repurcussions the fence had on the life of
innocent Palestinians".
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- - Edited by Duane Heath
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- http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1484887,00.html
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