Israel's wall to encircle West Bank village

Walajah, West Bank: Israel has started construction on a new section of its wall that Palestinian residents say could sound a death knell for their hamlet.
The wall, running much of the length of the West Bank, has already disrupted lives in many Palestinian towns and villages in its path.

But it threatens to outright smother Walajah: The community of about 2,000 on the southwest edge of occupied Jerusalem is to be completely encircled by a wall cutting it off from most of its open land, according to an Israeli Defence Ministry map.

Walajah old-timers are determined to stay, but doubt their children will feel the same way.

"We will cling to the village by our teeth," said Adel Atrash, a village council member.

"But we don't know how the next generation will look at things. Maybe they won't be able to live with all the difficulties and decide to leave."

Israel began building the wall in 2002, saying it would be a temporary bulwark against Palestinian suicide bombers and gunmen who have killed hundreds of Israelis.

However, the wall's zigzag through the West Bank brought allegations that Israel is unilaterally drawing a border and grabbing land by scooping up dozens of Jewish colonies.

Six years ago on July 9, the International Court of Justice said in a nonbinding ruling that the wall's path through occupied territory violates international law and that Israel should tear down what it has built.

Israel rejected the decision, saying the wall is crucial for keeping Israelis safe, and denies it is drawing a border.

"In future negotiations [on Palestinian statehood], the route of the security barrier [wall] will not constitute a political factor," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

Construction of the wall continues as Israel and the Palestinians hold indirect negotiations the US hopes will eventually lead to face-to-face talks on a peace treaty establishing a Palestinian state.

But the Palestinians have refused direct negotiations without a complete freeze on colony building.

In recent weeks, bulldozers began levelling land and uprooting trees near Walajah in the run-up to construction.

Ahmad Barghouti, 63, who lives close to the wall's path, says he lost 88 olive trees last month and now fears for a nearby family burial plot.

Confinement

The village's lawyer, Giath Nasser, says he won a temporary order to stop work on that section until Israel's Supreme Court decides what should be done with the graves of Barghouti's parents and grandmother.

The house of a neighbour, Omar Hajajla, lies just outside Walajah's wall loop. Hajajla said Israeli officials last week informed him his home would be surrounded by its own electric fence.

"This is like putting my entire family in jail," the father of three young boys said. "My children need to cross four gates to go school. We don't know how it will work out...."

The wall is just the latest blow for Walajah, which has lost most of its land to Israel in decades of conflict.

Israeli forces took control of the village in the 1948 Mideast War, and residents fled, some resettling on parts of its lands that ended up in the Jordanian-controlled West Bank.

After 1967, Israel expanded occupied east Jerusalem's boundaries and absorbed half of Walajah. But residents were still classified as West Bankers, not Jerusalemites, limiting their rights and freedom of movement.

Villagers face block

Today, the wall, almost two-thirds complete, runs for more than 400 kilometres through the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem, war-captured territories claimed by the Palestinians for a state. Once finished, the wall would put 9.4 per cent of the West Bank, including occupied east Jerusalem, on the Israeli side, along with 85 per cent of half a million Israeli colonisers, according to a UN report.

The wall has made it harder for tens of thousands of Palestinians to reach farm land, schools and medical care.

Those who live in the "seam zone" between Israel and the wall or have farm land there need special permits they can't always obtain and cross through gates that aren't always open, according to the UN report, issued on the anniversary of the world court ruling.

Walajah's fate appears to be sealed because it is virtually surrounded by Israeli colonies.

The wall will make a large dip into the West Bank to keep the colonies, including Har Gilo and the Gush Etzion bloc, on the "Israeli" side. Within that pocket, an extra loop of wall is to surround Walajah on three sides, with a fenced colony road to Har Gilo closing off the fourth side, according to the Defence Ministry map of the projected route.

Moreover, the loop runs tightly around Walajah's built-up area, penning it within less than a square mile and isolating it from almost all its farmlands. Of 36 Palestinian villages that are or will be caught in the "seam zone," none are as closely encircled as Walajah, said Ray Dolphin, a UN expert in occupied Jerusalem.

Israeli Defence Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror said on Friday he could not comment on the details of construction around Walajah, but noted the route withstood a challenge in an Israeli court four years ago.

The Israeli military would not comment on how villagers are to get in and out of their enclave. Israel has raised the possibility of an access road with a checkpoint, Atrash said, as well as gates so farmers could reach their lands. Residents are sceptical, considering the difficulties farmers elsewhere have had.

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