Israel approves barrier plans

Israel’s cabinet today approved final details of a plan to surround Jerusalem with a barrier – despite angry protests by Palestinians who say Israel is redrawing the disputed city’s boundaries and shifting its demographic balance in favour of Jews.

The cabinet acknowledged that some 55,000 Palestinian residents in four neighbourhoods will eventually be cut off from their city by the separation barrier, meant to stop Palestinian bombers, and promised to come up with a plan by September 1 on how to alleviate some of the hardships.

However, critics warned that despite the new provisions, tens of thousands of Palestinians, who have Jerusalem residency rights and pay municipal taxes, would probably face major delays in crossing through 11 gates in the barrier every day on their way to jobs and schools.

The 40-mile Jerusalem barrier is also expected to include the largest West Bank settlement, Maaleh Adumim with nearly 30,000 residents, on the Jerusalem side, further tilting the demographic scale.

Currently, about one third of the city’s 700,000 residents are Arabs, who live in east Jerusalem, captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians want to establish their future capital in east Jerusalem. They say the Jerusalem barrier – half of which has been built – all but crushes their aspirations by cutting off the city from its West Bank hinterland.

The city’s fate was to have been determined in talks on a final peace deal, and the Palestinians say Israel is pre-empting the outcome of these negotiations.

After Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip this summer, Israel is expected to come under growing pressure from the international community to renew peace talks with the Palestinians.

Israel denies it is drawing a final border. It has portrayed the Jerusalem barrier, part of a complex of obstacles being built along and in the West Bank, as a temporary security measure, meant to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers.

During four years of fighting, more than 100 Palestinian suicide bombers have crossed the unmarked and mostly unguarded ceasefire line between Israel and the West Bank to attack Israeli cities.

In Jerusalem alone, 170 people have been killed in 22 suicide bombings. The last one there was in September 2004.

“We are not moving the fence for enjoyment or our pleasure,” said Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, “but because there are security concerns of the highest level”.

The US has said Israel can build the separation barrier to defend itself from militants, but that it should minimise hardships for Palestinians. The Bush administration has also held that the barrier should not be built in such a way that it prejudices the outcome of a final peace deal.

The Jerusalem barrier leaves four Arab neighbourhoods of the city with 55,000 residents, including a refugee camp, on the West Bank side.

In addition, tens of thousands of Palestinians, who moved to the West Bank suburbs because of overcrowding, but hold Jerusalem identity cards, also find themselves outside the barrier, Israeli officials estimated today.

Palestinians with West Bank identity cards are banned from entering Jerusalem at all because of Israeli security restrictions.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas criticised the Israeli Cabinet decision. “We reject these measures,” he said. ”Israel is not serving the peace process nor its security well with such acts, but rather places more obstacles in the path to peace.”

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, said Israel must stop building the barrier, which he said was bringing ”catastrophe” upon the Palestinians.