UN: West Bank fence severs Palestinans farmers from fields

By The Associated Press
Haaretz 17.11.2007

Only 18 percent of some 30,000 West Bank farmers who used to work the lands cut off by Israel's separation fence now have Israeli permits to reach their fields, the United Nations said in a report on the lives of some 230,000 Palestinians in 67 communities close to the fence. The report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs looked at 15 communities with about 10,000 residents trapped between the fence and Israel, and at 52 communities with 220,000 residents on the Palestinian side of the divider. Those in the hemmed-in villages require permanent residency permits, while those on the east side of the fence need Israeli-issued visitors permits to reach lands or visit family in the enclosed communities.
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Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the report is one-sided and that Israel is working to reduce the fence's impact on the Palestinians. Israel started building the fence in 2002, saying it is a temporary security tool meant to keep out of Palestinian attackers who by then had killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in bombings and shootings. However, the fence is largely built on West Bank land and Palestinians say its meandering route amounts to a land grab. Once completed, it would slice off 8.6 percent of West Bank land and, according to UN data, incorporate 380,000 of 450,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, which the Palestinians demand for a future state. The UN report, citing local community leaders, said that of some 30,000 Palestinians who used to work their fields on the Israeli side of the fence, only 18 percent currently have permits to reach their fields. Some 3,000 people stopped applying because they'd been repeatedly rejected in the past. Sixty-seven gates are built into the 200 kilometer stretch of fence studied, the report said. Of those, 19 are open daily to those with permits, but are closed at night, while another 19 are open during special harvest seasons, or weekly, the report said. Of the 15 villages hemmed in by the fence, nine reported that pregnant women had to leave their homes weeks before birth to ensure they could access proper health care, and just over half the villages said they had no access to basic health care, meaning they had to pass through gates in Israel's fence for treatment. The UN report said all the hemmed-in villages reported single people had problems meeting spouses because of that isolation - a burden in conservative Palestinian society, which expects men and women to marry quite young, and looks disapprovingly upon those who delay marriage. The fence, alongside Israeli settlements and Israeli-only roads, has fragmented the West Bank. Some 60 percent has been completed, mostly in the northern West Bank and around Jerusalem. In an advisory ruling in 2004, the International Court of Justice said the parts of the fence that jut into the West Bank are illegal and called on Israel to dismantle them. Regev said the fence has boosted Israeli security. "We have seen since the fence has gone up, a 90 percent reduction of suicide bombings into Israel, surely these are facts that can't be ignored," Regev said. "Ultimately the route of the fence is for security reasons. We have a policy to find the greatest possible security to Israelis and minimize the negative impact to Palestinians," he said.