Ruff,Instead of obnoxious personal attacks why don't you read> It would be good therapy for you.
Israel Hems In a Sacred City
Encircling of Jerusalem Complicates Prospects for Peace
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 10, 2004; Page A01
JERUSALEM -- Israel is close to finishing a decades-long effort to surround Jerusalem with Jewish settlements, walls, fences and roads that will severely restrict Palestinian access to the city and could reduce the chance of its becoming the capital of a Palestinian state, according to documents, maps and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians and foreign diplomats.
Projects to cut off access to Jerusalem to Palestinians living in the West Bank, which borders the city on three sides, have accelerated since the start of the current Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Today, Jewish settlements outside the city have been integrated with the urban core, redrawing the map of Jerusalem and complicating any negotiations over its future and the future of West Bank settlements, Israeli and Palestinian experts say.
Wallerstein, 54, describes his mission as settling the lands around Jerusalem with as many Jewish communities as possible as quickly as possible, and firmly linking them to the city to guarantee that they are never surrendered. It is a religious obligation, he said, to try to fulfill God's biblical promise to give the Jewish people the lands of Judea and Samaria, as many religious Jews call the West Bank.
"My aim is to increase the population in Judea-Samaria where we can, because the places where we are not successful in putting Jewish people could be given to the Palestinian Authority," Wallerstein said.
Equally important, he said, "I have to connect the communities to the Israeli border" with substantial roads that do not run through Palestinian towns and are easily protected. "If I cannot show the ability to connect it to the Israeli border, someone will say, 'Evacuate it.' "
New Israeli roads allow settlers to commute from their fortified, red-roofed settlements to Jerusalem in minutes. The Palestinian roads are old and circuitous, meaning trips between neighboring villages can take an hour. And there are several strategic choke points built into the plan that would allow Israeli troops to shut down Palestinian roads "for the protection of Israelis," Wallerstein explained.
Wallerstein's home is in Ofra, a community of 2,000 Jews that he and his wife settled with three other families in 1975. Ofra is at the northern tip of a crescent-shaped series of Jewish settlements that extend about 15 miles from Jerusalem along the east side of Ramallah, the Palestinian political and commercial center in the West Bank.
The Israeli goal, according to Israelis and Palestinians, is to fill the gaps between those settlements until they are no longer a series of dots but a solid line of Jewish homes, businesses and industries.
"I need to put outposts between Jerusalem and Ofra, especially along the road -- not every outpost is a settlement, it can be a gas station or an industrial zone -- and to make it as wide a strip as I can," Wallerstein said.
West of the line of settlements is a thin strip of land annexed by Israel in 1967 as part of Jerusalem. Still farther west is another long finger of Jewish settlements that extends northwest from Jerusalem. The result is three long, Israeli-controlled corridors that sprout north from central Jerusalem, splitting Palestinian territory into wedges.
In addition, a major east-west road, built by Israel to connect the corridors, further divides Palestinian neighborhoods. And along Jerusalem's northern boundary, construction was finished recently on a portion of the massive fence project.
The roads and fences have divided some Palestinian towns and villages, sometimes preventing people from driving and even walking from one side of their town to the other. The barriers have divided families. They have separated students from schools, workers from jobs, farmers from fields.
"Architecture is so much more effective in limiting Palestinian statehood than any other weapon," said Eyal Weizman, a 32-year-old Israeli architect who has mapped the growth of Jewish settlements for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem. He charged that the Israeli moves are "not to serve society but for containment -- to create barriers to Palestinian movement and their economy and growth."
If Jerusalem were one day to serve as the Palestinian capital, the Israelis would need to build 40 miles of walls and 20 bridges and tunnels to connect islands of Palestinian sovereignty to each other, he said. "It's nonsense to think that international borders can do this type of gymnastics," he said. "How can you have a Palestinian state without the air over it and the ground underneath it?" |
