scoone
01-13-2004, 02:04 PM
Tearful Palestinians watched cranes lower huge concrete slabs into place at the edge of Arab East Jerusalem Tuesday as the latest sections of a disputed Israeli barrier cut them off from the city.
The killing of an Israeli in a roadside ambush near a West Bank settlement underlined the type of shootings and suicide bombings that Israel says the barrier is designed to prevent.
But in a sign that Israel might give up some of the land it has occupied since 1967, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon raised the possibility that the army would one day leave the Gaza Strip.
In the past three days, work has been stepped up on the barrier separating the suburb of Abu Dis from Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as capital of an independent state and Israelis see as part of their own indivisible capital.
"It used to take me a minute to get to my mother's house. Now how long is it going to take me to get there?" asked Nadia Ghazali, dabbing her cheeks with a tissue, as she watched the machinery lumber in front of her apartment block.
The barrier of concrete and razor wire is eventually designed to separate Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, from the Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
Israelis brush off criticism even from their main U.S. ally over a barrier they say keeps out suicide bombers and other attackers. The army said an Israeli was shot dead in an ambush on a car near a West Bank settlement Tuesday.
"GREATEST CATASTROPHE"
Palestinians call the barrier an attempt to annex land and fear it will become a de facto border if Sharon carries out unilateral partition moves he has threatened if talks on a U.S.-backed "road map" fail.
At his besieged headquarters of Ramallah, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat called the barrier the biggest catastrophe to befall the Palestinians since their exodus during the 1948 war at the creation of the Jewish State.
Few on either side have high hopes for the road map peace plan, bogged down by violence and foot-dragging
Sharon raised the possibility Tuesday, though, that the army could one day leave the Gaza Strip, where up to 8,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy military protection alongside more than one million Palestinians.
"I hope the day will come when we will not have to sit in the Strip," Sharon said in a speech to a group of Bedouin Arabs serving in the Israeli army that was broadcast on Army Radio.
But a senior official, commenting on Sharon's remarks, said there would be no dramatic pullout from the Gaza Strip, there was no certainty that settlements would go and that there could be no relinquishing of anywhere vital to security.
Recent polls show most Israelis would be happy to abandon the Gaza Strip and isolated settlements in the West Bank if it meant an end to more than three years of violence that has left over 2,300 Palestinians and 840 Israelis dead.
The killing of an Israeli in a roadside ambush near a West Bank settlement underlined the type of shootings and suicide bombings that Israel says the barrier is designed to prevent.
But in a sign that Israel might give up some of the land it has occupied since 1967, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon raised the possibility that the army would one day leave the Gaza Strip.
In the past three days, work has been stepped up on the barrier separating the suburb of Abu Dis from Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as capital of an independent state and Israelis see as part of their own indivisible capital.
"It used to take me a minute to get to my mother's house. Now how long is it going to take me to get there?" asked Nadia Ghazali, dabbing her cheeks with a tissue, as she watched the machinery lumber in front of her apartment block.
The barrier of concrete and razor wire is eventually designed to separate Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, from the Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
Israelis brush off criticism even from their main U.S. ally over a barrier they say keeps out suicide bombers and other attackers. The army said an Israeli was shot dead in an ambush on a car near a West Bank settlement Tuesday.
"GREATEST CATASTROPHE"
Palestinians call the barrier an attempt to annex land and fear it will become a de facto border if Sharon carries out unilateral partition moves he has threatened if talks on a U.S.-backed "road map" fail.
At his besieged headquarters of Ramallah, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat called the barrier the biggest catastrophe to befall the Palestinians since their exodus during the 1948 war at the creation of the Jewish State.
Few on either side have high hopes for the road map peace plan, bogged down by violence and foot-dragging
Sharon raised the possibility Tuesday, though, that the army could one day leave the Gaza Strip, where up to 8,000 Jewish settlers live under heavy military protection alongside more than one million Palestinians.
"I hope the day will come when we will not have to sit in the Strip," Sharon said in a speech to a group of Bedouin Arabs serving in the Israeli army that was broadcast on Army Radio.
But a senior official, commenting on Sharon's remarks, said there would be no dramatic pullout from the Gaza Strip, there was no certainty that settlements would go and that there could be no relinquishing of anywhere vital to security.
Recent polls show most Israelis would be happy to abandon the Gaza Strip and isolated settlements in the West Bank if it meant an end to more than three years of violence that has left over 2,300 Palestinians and 840 Israelis dead.