-Caveat Lector- Anger as Israelis set up 'ghetto' for Arabs Alan Philps in Qalqiliya (Filed: 21/12/2002)
A light rain brings some of the farmers of Qalqiliya out to look at their fields, which should be busy with orange and lemon pickers. But the only sign of activity is a giant Israeli digger carving out a trench wide enough to drive a car along. The digger works amid a scene of devastation: an 80-yard-wide area stripped of its orchards and greenhouses that will shortly become the perimeter fence of what is effectively a big open-air prison enclosing a town of 40,000. Qalqiliya used to thrive on commerce with Israelis who live only a couple of miles away across the pre-1967 border. Its shops, garages and dentists all have fading signs in Hebrew to encourage Israelis to spend their money. But a 220-mile security fence, designed to keep suicide bombers out of Israel, is about to turn this border town into the most dramatic example of what Palestinians call the ghetto-isation of their land. There is already a 24-ft concrete wall - higher than the Berlin Wall - to the west of the town. A complex of fences, barbed wire and trenches will isolate it to the north and south. To the east, the Israelis have served notice that they plan to build an army-controlled gate, a frontier post separating the town from the rest of the West Bank. Maps provided by the Israeli army show the town as if enclosed in a bottle with a long neck, with the gate in place of the cork. "We lost our land. We're living in a big prison," says Darwish Haj Hassan, 20, driving a horse and cart past the digging machine. Nidal Jal'oud, an official at the mayor's office, put it more bluntly. "We are going to live in a ghetto - like the Jews lived in in Europe," he said. It is hard to argue. The fence - called a separation barrier by the Israelis - is deep inside Palestinian territory, hugging the edge of the town. There are barely 50 yards between a girls' school and the watchtower of the concrete wall, and only 100 to 200 yards of free space north and south of the town. The fence also cuts off hundreds of acres of the best farmland in the West Bank from its owners in Qalqiliya and 32 surrounding villages. The Civil Administration, as the Israeli military government is known, has even asked the local officials to help build the gate which will complete their incarceration. The fence is designed to keep out Palestinian infiltrators. One of the most devastating attacks - the killing of 21 people outside a Tel Aviv disco last year - was carried out by a Jordanian suicide bomber who set off from Qalqiliya. But the line of the fence suggests to the Palestinians that there is more than security in play. "We expected it to be along the old [1967] border," said Khalid Shanti, secretary of the Palestinian Farmers' Union. His greenhouses have already been bulldozed and he is isolated from his land on the other side of the fence, now a closed military zone. The Israeli Defence Ministry said it would provide nine agricultural gates in the Qalqiliya area. But farmers are still worried that they will find it hard to reach their fields and get their produce to market. Mr Shanti said: "What used to be a 15-minute walk will be an hour-long ride in several taxis and I will need a permit. So will all my family if they are to work. Everyone knows that when you go for a permit the Israelis ask you to work as an informer. Step by step we are losing our land." The reason for the fence's incursion into Palestinian territory is to enclose two Jewish settlements - Alfei Menashe and Zufim - within the military zone. The Defence Ministry said the route of the fence was dictated by "security considerations derived from the topography". To Palestinians the fence looks like a land grab. Foreign aid donors, who have funded irrigation projects costing millions of pounds, believe that in three years many farmers will have been forced to abandon their holdings, leaving them free for Jewish settlers. Mr Shanti said: "The Israelis want us to disappear. They want Qalqiliya erased from the map." Gershon Baskin, of the Israel-Palestine Centre for Research and Information, said Israel needed a fence but he winced at the use of the word ghetto. "You cannot talk to Jewish people using this word. It is too closely connected with the Nazi era, the Warsaw Ghetto and the annihilation of all the Jews in it. I would just call it a prison." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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