- ABU DIS, West Bank (AP) --
Israeli construction crews hoisted 26-foot-high concrete slabs into the
middle of a main road in this Palestinian suburb of Jerusalem on Monday,
cutting off thousands of Palestinians from the city they consider their
home.
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- The impenetrable wall is part of a series of barriers
Israel is building around much of the West Bank with the stated aim of
keeping out Palestinian suicide bombers.
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- Palestinians see it as an effort to take land they claim
for a future state. Along its path, the barrier has cut Palestinians off
from their fields and schools, their hospitals and businesses.
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- Parts of the wall have been put up elsewhere around east
Jerusalem - which Israel seized in 1967 along with the West Bank - but
the sections put up in Abu Dis were the most intrusive yet, signaling that
Israel's encirclement of the city is becoming more permanent.
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- There had already been a 6-foot-high divider that slowed
but did not stop the flow of people and goods between the West Bank and
Jerusalem. Residents have been able to crawl over that barrier or pass
goods over it.
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- But the new construction replaces that with a stark,
impenetrable wall, more than four times as high, running down the center
of Shayah St.
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- Work began Saturday night and continued Monday morning.
Earth movers ripped down the old barrier, which was covered with graffiti
declaring: "The wall is wrong," and "Apartheid wall."
Bulldozers dug out a long pit that cranes filled in with the slabs of the
new wall.
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- The barrier in Abu Dis also has symbolic significance.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia lives in the suburb, and the building
set aside for the future Palestinian parliament is located there.
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- In past peace negotiations, Abu Dis was proposed as the
center of a possible compromise capital for a Palestinian state, with some
neighborhoods of east Jerusalem tacked on - though the idea seems to have
been dropped since.
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- The Palestinians seek a capital in Jerusalem for a future
state. Tens of thousands of Palestinians live in the Arab neighborhoods
of east Jerusalem that will lie on the "Israel side" of the wall's
planned path, along with Jewish neighborhoods built there since 1967.
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- The Abu Dis construction confused and angered residents,
many of whom consider themselves Jerusalemites, carry the blue identification
card of Jerusalem residents and say they pay Jerusalem city taxes.
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- "This is Jerusalem. Why are they putting the wall
here," said Yazid Abu Hliel, 31, who lives on the West Bank side of
the new barrier.
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- Abu Hliel worries that his four children will not be
able to cross to get to school and he won't be able to reach his job as
a floor polisher.
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- "They are putting us into prisons," he said.
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- Palestinian leaders have reacted with anger to the building
of the barrier, a line of walls, trenches, fences and razor wire that snakes
through parts of West Bank land that Palestinians claim for a future state.
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- "At a time when we're trying to make peace, the
Israeli government continues with the wall, settlement activity, stifling
... closures, in a line of fait accomplis that destroy the essence of peace
in the region," Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.
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- Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of The Associated Press.
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- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=1&u=/ap
/20040112/ap_on_re_mi_ea/walled_jerusalem
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