More pot-holes on the road-map, big trouble>>
Hamas Says Israeli Barrier Will Not Stop Attacks
Fri October 3, 2003 04:55 AM ET
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamic militant movement Hamas said Friday the barrier Israel is building with the West Bank would not prevent attacks on Israelis and doomed the U.S.-backed peace "road map" to failure.
"The wall will not protect the Zionist entity and will not stop the strikes of resistance. The day will come when this wall will eventually collapse just as the Berlin Wall collapsed," Hamas said in a statement released in the Gaza Strip.
The statement stepped up a Palestinian campaign against the barrier, which Israel decided Wednesday to extend deeper into Palestinian territory to enclose some big Jewish settlements.
The Palestinian Authority, led by President Yasser Arafat, is demanding intervention by the world powers steering Middle East peacemaking to persuade Israel to stop the project.
Israel says the barrier, which is mostly an electronic sensor fence but in a few parts a huge concrete wall, is needed to keep out suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of Israelis as part of a three-year-old uprising for statehood.
It also unveiled plans Thursday to build more than 600 new homes in Jewish settlements, defying the road map's calls for a freeze on all "settlement activity" and prompting Secretary of State Colin Powell to express his concern.
Palestinians say the barrier is a unilateral "land grab" intended to cement Jewish settlements in the West Bank which the Palestinians want as part of their independent state.
Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Ahmed Qurie condemned the Israeli actions.
"This proves Israel is not serious about peace and aims at unilaterally setting political borders to prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian independent state," he was quoted as saying by al-Ayyam newspaper.
HAMAS SAYS BARRIER WILL INCREASE ANGER
Hamas, which has carried out many suicide bombings and opposes Israel's existence, said the barrier would "provoke more Palestinian anger and fuel the spirit of resistance."
"The wall will tear up the West Bank and confiscate vast territory, create buffer zones in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will live in big prisons," it said. "And that means it will be impossible to establish a Palestinian political entity and it means the early failure of the road map project."
Arafat appealed Thursday to the "Quartet" of Middle East peacemakers -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- to stop the barrier being built.
The road map the Quartet devised has bogged down, with each side saying the other should take the next step to implement it.
Israel says it has to take measures to prevent attacks on its citizens because the Palestinian Authority has not carried out an obligation under the road map to crack down on militants, a move which Palestinian leaders say would risk civil war.
Israel also denies it is creating a de facto border to annex territory it seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
About 230,000 Jews live in 150 heavily guarded settlements scattered among 3.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The international community says such settlements are illegal under international law, but Israel disputes this.
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