JERUSALEM, June 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Raising tensions and fears about its long-term effect on the region, Israel will start, on Sunday, June 16, 2002, building a massive security fence along the Palestinian West Bank. Whereas Israeli settlers lobby for a fence around Palestinian controlled lands (Area A), not along the Green Line.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer will kick off the construction at a ceremony in Kfar Salem, an Arab district situated about 12 kilometers (seven miles) northwest from the West Bank town of Jenin, a Defense Ministry statement said Friday, June 14, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The fence would mostly cordon off the Green Line, the boundary that marks the frontier between Israel and the West Bank, which Israel seized, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East War.

The Gaza Strip is already walled off, reducing the threat to Israel from the area's resistance Palestinian activists.

The new project aims to end porous borders between Israel and the West Bank that existed from 1967 until the start of the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993) when Israel imposed major restrictions on the Palestinian population's freedom of movement.

Measures, such as checkpoints and curfews, intensified after the second Intifada erupted 20 months ago.

The first phase of the fence will be built between Kfar Salem and Kfar Kassem, 120 kilometers (75 miles) to the south, and some 20 kilometers (13 miles) to the east of Tel Aviv.

Construction of the first stretch, costing about 400 million shekels (80.6 million dollars), is likely to take six months.

Eventually, the security fence will stretch 350 kilometers (220 miles) along the Green Line, and will encircle Jerusalem, according to Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz.

The Israeli authorities are very discreet about the exact nature of this defensive barrier, which will comprise fences, trenches and walls equipped with electronic surveillance devices.

However, the most controversial aspect of the fence is where it is to be situated.

A senior Israeli military official, quoted Friday in the Israeli daily Maariv, said the fence would not follow the exact path of the Green Line.

"The planned separation fence along the demarcation line will be built on the basis of topographical and demographic barriers..., and not only on the basis of the Green Line," the officer said, without being identified.

In practice, this means that in certain places the fence could extend a few kilometers (miles) to the east of the Green Line, into West Bank territory, to give the Israeli army greater strategic control over the area.

Both Israeli right-wingers and Palestinians, for different reasons, fear this fence could end up replacing the boundaries between Israel and the West Bank.

The case of Barta'a, a small Arab village of 5,000 residents near Kfar Salem, is a case in point.

The Green Line cuts Barta'a down the middle, with the division effectively putting the village's affluent western side in Israel and the poorer eastern side in the West Bank.

According to the Israeli media, the fence would be built two kilometers (1.2 miles) to the east of Barta'a.

That means the entire village, including its Palestinian half, would find itself on the Israeli side of the fence, a radical change with both economic and personal consequences for the residents.

To the right of the political spectrum, voices are raised, warning that the path of the fence should not follow the Green Line in any way, for fear this would become the official frontier between Israel and a future Palestinian state, even though such negotiations have not yet started.

The National Religious Party, which represents Jewish settlers and holds five seats in parliament, threatened to bolt Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national unity government if the fence divides Israel from the West Bank, Maariv reported.

Many right-wing elements harbor the ambition of annexing the entire occupied territories.

For their part, the Palestinians have also slammed the building of such a fence.

"This fence will be a fence of hate. The 'whites' will be in Tel Aviv and the 'blacks' in the West Bank," senior Palestinian official Mohamed Dahlan told Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonot, in a reference to the ruling Apartheid system which was in force in South Africa until 1994.

Meanwhile, the Yesha Council of Settlements is lobbying to convince government ministers the fence should be along the lines defining Area A, the Palestinian Authority territories, rather than along the Green Line.

Council Director General Adi Mintz said the effort is to make sure the fence does not go up on the Green Line, so it doesn't become a "political" separation. According to Mintz, ministers told him that contrary to published reports, the security cabinet did not approve a 115-kilometer fence, but only 50-60 kilometers of fence in the Jerusalem area and the Gilboa mountain area near Jenin.

Mintz said a special committee on the subject of the fence, comprised of Sharon, Ben-Eliezer and Public Minister Landau, agreed on an "obstacle course that includes a fence, but is not limited to it, and not on the Green Line."

Benzi Lieberman, chairman of the Yesha Council, promised "a bitter struggle" against the government if a fence goes up on the Green Line, since "it has the potential to become a political line," he said.