Palestinians say wall is a noose

Gray, sleek, and massive, the Israeli security barrier halfway around Qalqilya looks like a wall. But townspeople say the rising concrete serves as a noose, constricting traffic, cutting farmers off from their fields, and choking the local economy.

"It's a systematic program to destroy the infrastructure of the Palestinian people," charges Qalqilya Gov. Mustafa Malki.

When the barrier is completed this year, Qalqilya's only entrance - or exit - will be an Israeli checkpoint just 26 feet wide.

The Israeli government approved the plan to build the wall throughout the West Bank in June 2002, after a spate of more than 90 suicide bombings, some of which originated in Qalqilya. Palestinians say the barriers are just the latest ploy to seize their land and bring their economy to its knees. According to an upcoming report commissioned by international donors, the wall will accelerate an unravelling of Palestinian institutional and economic development.

But for many Israelis, the wall is the only answer to unremitting Palestinian attacks. "Israel is accused of harming Palestinians economically, but we don't get up in the morning and say 'Let's [hurt] the Palestinians today.' There's a need for this: to prevent terrorism," says Alan Baker, legal adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry. "We have a right to life and we have an obligation to protect our citizens. We appreciate the problems the Palestinians are facing, but if we have to close roads it's because something's wrong."

Not surprisingly, Qalqilya residents see it differently. "They call it a security wall," says Governor Malki. "We call it a wall to confiscate land, because this wall doesn't prevent anyone from getting into Israel who really wants to."

When finished in June 2003 the wall will snake down the West Bank's 225-mile length, incorporating trenches, electric fences and security patrols. For most of its journey south, the wall does not hew to the Green Line, the pre-1967 border that marks the divide between Israel and the Occupied Territories. Instead, it cuts into Palestinian territory, annexing 10 percent of West Bank land, according to one estimate by the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights, also known as LAW.

The wall's course "doesn't have any political consideration," Mr. Baker says, adding that nothing Israelis or Palestinians do to land in the Occupied Territories will have "any significance" when the two sides eventually sit down to final status negotiations.

Compared to the informality of Qalqilya's ragged concrete streets, the barrier looks like an alien monolith, dropped into the fields. Around the city, it bulges out to encircle three nearby Israeli settlements, keeping them on the Israeli side of the wall. Qalqilya's land loss from the wall's detour will be compounded by a security zone extending 60 to 100 meters from the wall. People will not be able to enter this area, forcing farmers like Ibrahim Shraim to abandon affected fields.

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