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February 20, 2004/Shevat 28 5764, Vol. 56, No. 22
Jerusalem fence divides lives
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Palestinian schoolboys scramble onto cement blocks and climb on the 26-foot-high slabs of concrete forming the towering wall that is blocking off Jerusalem from the West Bank.
From their perch, the boys can see both sides of the wall that runs along Shaya Street, the previously invisible municipal boundary between Jerusalem and the West Bank village of Abu Dis.
As in other neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, where nearly all of the city's Arabs live, the barrier cuts through the city and its suburbs - separating relatives, cutting off workers from their jobs and students from their schools, and separating those on the Palestinian side from hospitals, municipal services and cemeteries in Israel.
Israeli political and military officials say the wall in Jerusalem, like the hundreds of miles of barrier being built to separate the rest of Israel from the West Bank, is a temporary measure to block Palestinian terrorists.
The two sides' differing views of the fence are coming to a head as a Feb. 23 hearing on the barrier's legality approaches at the Inter-national Court of Justice at The Hague. Israel has said it will not make arguments in the trial, as The Hague has no jurisdiction in the matter.
Palestinians argue that the fence is an illegal land grab, taking ground they claim as their own and that they want for a future state - including Jerusalem, which they hope one day will become their capital.
Israel claims that the fence is a necessary security precaution - saying it is perhaps the least invasive measure the Jewish state can take after three years of Palestinian terrorism have left more than 1,000 Israelis dead and thousands more wounded.
In most places hewing roughly to the Green Line - the armistice line from Israel's 1948 War of Independence, which served as a de facto boundary until the 1967 Six-Day War - the fence is altering the delicate fabric of life that has grown up between Israelis and Palestinians here over nearly four decades.
The ramifications of such a physical divide are seen most starkly in Jerusalem, the only part of the barrier route that slices through a major urban area.
Elsewhere along the boundary with the West Bank, the barrier is com-prised mostly of a high-tech network of wire fence, ditches and patrol roads. In urban areas like Abu Dis, which merges into Jerusalem, such a setup would involve confis-cating additional land and further disrupting everyday life, so large walls are being constructed instead.
As Israeli authorities build along the Jerusalem municipal boundary established in 1967 - when several eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods were seized and annexed as part of the city - the barrier divides Palestinian neigh-borhoods. Jewish neighbor-hoods on the eastern side of the city are included on the Israeli side of the wall.
More than half of Jerusalem's Palestinian population lives inside the municipal boundaries - some 200,000 people.
Critics of the fence ask why Palestinians beyond the city limits are considered a security threat when those inside the city apparently are not.
Security officials say the government decided to build the fence along the city's municipal boundaries - and those Arabs living inside city limits are legal residents of Israel.
Still, they hope to prevent terrorists from using eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods on the West Bank side of the city as launching pads for attacks - as has occurred in the past. The barrier, they say, will control the flow of people from the West Bank into Jerusalem by channeling all traffic to checkpoints, as a regular border crossing does.
For decades, the security officials emphasize, Pal-estinians enjoyed unfettered freedom of movement, and the current change has been brought about only by the terrorism of the intifada.
Palestinians say the Jerusalem portion of the fence is a political attempt to solidify Israeli control of the city. The status of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Before construction began on the Jerusalem portion of the barrier, the municipal borders were invisible, not affecting the daily lives of residents on either side in a significant way.
Now, however, a line will be drawn between those living in the city and those living in its Palestinian suburbs, for whom the city is the center of their economic and social lives.
Palestinians say the wall creates maddening practical obstacles.
"All of our people are angry about this. I cannot visit my family there," said Ahmed Sabek, a taxi van driver, gesturing to the West Bank side of the wall, "and they cannot visit us here."
But Moshe Karmi, a retired diamond polisher was born in Jerusalem and fought there in the wars of 1948 and 1967, said Palestinians have left Israel with no choice.
"I'm for the fence. It's for our security," Karmi said. "We want to live and they are trying to kill us. We also have a right to live here."
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