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Israel To Isolate Jerusalem With Defensive Barriers
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| Barak:
“Fence is needed until PA is willing to resume talks” |
HAMBURG,
April 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Former Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday, April 16, that it was important to
create defensive barriers between Israel and the Palestinians occupied
territories by erecting a fence between both areas, news agencies
reported.
This,
he added is important until the Palestinian Authority is willing to
resume negotiations once again with Israel, reported Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
Speaking
to The Financial Times Barak said that the Gaza strip which is
surrounded by a fence is the best evidence that this method is
effective since no “terrorist activity” has come out of this area.
AFP
reported that on Monday Israel had started work to build these
barriers that would isolate occupied Jerusalem from the Palestinians
in the West Bank, public television reported.
It
broadcast pictures of teams of workers laying down barbed wire while
bulldozers dug trenches north of the city.
The
Israeli government has given the green light for a project to isolate
Greater Jerusalem with a system of defenses. Greater Jerusalem
includes Jewish settlement districts in the city's annexed eastern
sector which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
According
to Israeli newspapers, the system will include walls, trenches,
fences, mounds and watch towers running 54 kilometers to the north,
south and east of Jerusalem.
Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon last week floated the idea of "security
zones" in the West Bank to buffer Israel from Palestinian martyr
operations.
The
right-wing premier sent in tanks and thousands of troops into the West
Bank on March 29 to smash what he called Palestinian "terrorist
infrastructures”.
In
an analysis published on Antiwar.com website, Ran HaCohen, a professor
in Tel-Aviv University said that the martyr operations have been
“singled out, over emphasized and isolated from their context.”
“Professional
demonizers like Thomas Friedman work hard to persuade us of suicidal
lies like the one claiming suicide bombers are "a whole new form
of warfare" unique to Palestinians,” said HaCohen adding that
the direct involvement of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in these
attacks is an outright Israeli fabrication.
“Suicide
bombers, are not different from any other weapon. They can be used
against three kinds of targets: soldiers, settlers, and civilians
inside Israel,” said HaCohen adding that when acting against
soldiers, the suicide bomber has international law on his side.
“International
legislation acknowledges the right of occupied people to use force
against their oppressors, both inside the occupied territories and
outside them. Based upon the principles of the Hague International
Convention of 1907 and confirmed in the Nuremberg Tribunal after World
War II, this determination was essential to forestall Nazi claims that
partisans, Ghetto fighters, and other underground resistance forces in
the territories occupied by Germany had allegedly been
"terrorists". In the Nuremberg Tribunal it was unequivocally
set down that resistance fighters, including those who had struggled
within Germany itself, acted in accordance with the regulations of
international law.”
While
HaCohen said that bombing civilians is a crime he questioned the
situation if it is carried out inside occupied territories. “If
Palestinians do it inside the occupied territories, the great question
is what those civilians, also known as settlers, are doing there.
Their presence in the occupied territories may not justify killing
them, but it raises serious doubts as for who is responsible for
it.”
He
questioned why Israel does not put up a fence between Israel and the
occupied West Bank.
He
said that there are three reasons to account for that. The first is
that a fence might be interpreted as a border and Israel is
“unwilling to give up the West Bank. Therefore, it rather lets its
citizens die in suicide attacks. It's as simple as that,” said
HaCohen.
The
second reason revolves around the numerous Israeli settlements spread
throughout the entire West Bank.
“If
the settlements are taken in, you have to take the surrounding
Palestinian population too, and then what's the point. If you leave
the settlements out, you solve only part of the problem.
“The
smaller part of the problem, actually. Israel cares much more about
its 200.000 settlers in the West Bank than about its 6 million
citizens inside the Green Line (indeed, most settlements are
surrounded by a fence).
“Take
this: in the 1990s, the Israeli Government spent on every settler an
average of 5,428 NIS a year. The national average per citizen was just
3,807 NIS. Israeli Arab citizens were worth much less: 2,402 NIS. The
cheaper the citizen, the cheaper his life,” he explained.
The
third reason is that Israel uses the terror attacks on its citizens
especially on civilians inside the Green Line, to justify its ever
more violent occupation and to endlessly expand its illegal
settlements. “Why build a simple fence, if you can occasionally
sacrifice a few civilians in return for a huge propaganda benefit for
the occupation and the settlements?”
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