- QAFFIN, West Bank (UPI) --
Clad in a white keffiyah, a classic Arab headdress held in place by two
circles of black rope, Ibrahim Said al-Dikawi surveyed the olive grove
beside the old boundary line with Israel.
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- "These are my olives," said al-Dikawi, 67.
"My family lives off the olives." They have been on this land
outside Qaffin, a northwestern West Bank town, for some 150 years, he added.
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- Soon it will be harvesting time. But as Qaffin's mayor
Taisir Harashe warned, "In 10 days the bulldozers will be here!"
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- Al-Dikawi's 2.5-acre plot will be one of many affected
by a multi-million-dollar border fence Israel is erecting between the West
Bank and Israel to prevent terrorist incursions.
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- Surveyors have left markings and small plastic strips
on trees, stones and greenhouses for the equipment that will uproot trees
and level earth to clean out a swath 50 meters (160 feet) wide. When complete,
the strip will include a series of obstacles composing the security fence.
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- These obstacles will begin -- on the West Bank side --
with several rolls of barbed wire piled high. Then there will be a ditch
to prevent cars from crossing, a path, and an electronic fence that will
activate an alarm whenever it is touched. On the other side of that fence
there will be path of soft sand to record any foot travel, and finally
a paved patrol road.
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- The first stage of this fence will roughly cover 126
of the 360-kilometer-long (78 of the 225-mile-long) line between the West
Bank and Israel proper, the Defense Ministry's spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi
said.
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- Israel and Jordan drew the original boundary line between
their countries when they signed an armistice agreement following the first
Israel-Arab war of 1948. It became known as the Green Line. The Israelis
crossed that line during the Six Days War of 1967, occupied the West Bank
that was then part of Jordan, and have since tried to obliterate the boundary
line. They have established hundreds of settlements throughout the West
Bank and their official maps no longer show the line. Many Palestinians
are now determined to restore the old boundary -- as are many Israelis
to preserve their gains in the region.
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- The new fence will run fairly close to the Green Line,
also known as the pre-1967 line, but not right on it. Niedak-Ashkenazi
said the fence would veer up to five kilometers (a little over 3 miles)
from the Green Line.
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- The Israeli spokeswoman said she did not know how much
West Bank land would be trapped between the fence and the Green Line.
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- She said, however, that 11,000 West Bankers who live
in three villages would find themselves on the Israeli side of the fence.
That, she argued, is for their own good.
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- The three villages are so closely connected to the Israeli-Arab
town of Baka al-Gharbiya that Israel would have to destroy 60 houses to
separate them, Niedak-Ashkenazi said.
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- Palestinian geographer Khalil Tafakji, director of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization's Mapping and Survey Department in
Jerusalem, told United Press International he has studied relevant military
orders, maps and aerial photos and concluded the plan would affect an area
of 105 square kilometers. Eleven villages with 26,000 residents will find
themselves between the new fence and the pre-1967 line. The houses of 12
more villages will outside the enclosed area, but their lands will be across
the fence, inside that area, Tafakji added.
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- Qaffin is one of the villages that will be affected.
Harashe said 150 acres of their land will be used for the fence and 1,500
acres will be in the closed zone. That is 80 percent of Qaffin's farming
land, he maintained. Half the 9,000 residents live only off agriculture,
he said.
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- The meandering fence will also run through a sliver of
land on the Israeli side of the pre-1967 line.
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- Some Israelis have opposed the fence arguing it would
be a waste of money. Each kilometer will cost $1 million but will not stop
Palestinians from shooting over it, the critics said. And if troops are
not there to monitor it, the fence is worthless, they added.
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- Many political objections delayed construction at least
since 1995 when suicide bombings began. Hardliners, including members of
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party, were concerned such a fence
would indicate an Israeli readiness to eventually return to the Green Line
and withdraw from the West Bank.
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- However, the government's failure to stop Palestinian
militants from sneaking over in cars and on foot for suicide, shooting
and bomb-planting attacks have sparked so much public pressure for a proper
border fence that even the most hawkish ministers yielded.
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- It was difficult to resist the public pressure partly
because the electronic fence that encloses the Gaza Strip has reduced cross-border
attacks.
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- The Israelis initially tried an easier measure near al-Dikawi's
trees: a waist-high metal barrier, right on the old border, to stop cars
from crossing. However the red and green barrier running between the Palestinian
olive trees and Israeli banana plantations cannot stop people who easily
swing under it or jump over it.
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- In June the government authorized building the first
part of the new fence and Defense Ministry officials insisted the line
is strictly security-oriented and has no political implications.
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- The plan takes advantage of some existing defenses. A
company constructing the Trans-Israel toll road built a high gray concrete
wall opposite the West Bank town of Qalqilya to prevent Palestinian gunmen
from shooting into the Israeli cars using the road. Several local communities
located near the Green Line that suffered from Arab shooting now have their
own defensive walls as well.
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- At the edge of the West Bank village of Hirbet Jebara,
36-year-old Hussein Jebara said he was looking forward to the new Israeli
measures. His family owned 62.5 acres before the 1948 war and the Green
Line cut through them. They had to choose between staying on the Israeli
side where they would have only 12.5 acres of their land, or to move to
the West Bank and keep the other 50. They moved to the West Bank.
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- Jebara, a father of seven, said that "Inshallah"
(God willing) they will now get their old land back."
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- The Defense Ministry's spokeswoman said Israel would
compensate the landowners, an offer to which Qaffin's Harashe replied:
"Nobody will accept any compensation for his land. This is the source
of our food. We don't want money. We want our land," he stressed.
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- Niedak-Ashkenazi said landowners would receive special
permit to cross the fence and tend their lands. The Israelis will build
dozens of gates along the line as well as crossing points for produce.
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- But Harashe was skeptical. He said he feared they would
have to travel 10 kilometers (more than six miles) to get to their plots
that are only 300 meters away and that the Israelis would suspend the permits
whenever there is trouble.
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- The Defense Ministry's spokeswoman maintained much depended
on the Palestinians themselves. "The entire plan is Israel's answer
to the problem of Palestinian terror and it is an attempt to minimize the
danger of incursions by terrorists and car bombs. The calmer the security
situation will be, the easier it will be for Palestinian farmers to cross
and cultivate their lands," she said.
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- Qaffin's farmers wanted to show reporters the groundbreaking
works Israel was already doing. They took a short route to the site while
the reporters, brought there by the Israeli B'Tselem human rights organization,
returned to their bus for a round about trip.
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- The journalists did not reach the meeting point. Soldiers
at the Bakaa el-Sharkiya roadblock stopped the bus, said there was a suspicious
car ahead and the road was closed.
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- An Israeli army spokesman said afterward that sappers
later shot at the car and a powerful blast shook the area. Little was left
of the car after the explosion, which would have detonated a few dozen
kilograms of explosives and several gas canisters inside the car via cellphone,
he said.
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- Thursday gunmen shot and wounded an Israeli-Arab engaged
in building the fence.
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- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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