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Europese Karavaan voor Gerechtigheid naar Palestina

Van het in Israël gevestigde IPCRI, nieuwsdienst inzake Paleslijnen en Israël, ontvingen we eveneens een bericht over het ingrijpen van het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken van Israël en het optreden van het Israëlische leger tegen de Karavaan voor Gerechtigheid bij de grenspost met Jordanië.

Israeli authorities bar 120 Europeans access
to Occupied Territories

ICPRI
July 21, 2005
By Gershon Baskin

For the last couple of days, the Israeli Occupation Authorities have continued to deny the 120-member European solidarity group entering the Palestinian territories through Al-Karama crossing that connects the Jordanian territories with the West bank.

Worthy to note that the European group set out two weeks ago from Strasbourg in France crossing a large number of European and Arab countries in the hope to enter the Palestinian territories to show their support to the Palestinian refugees and their opposition to the Israeli-erected Apartheid wall.

The Israeli Authorities on their turn barred the group that has been waiting in the Jordanian side for two days from entering the Palestinian territories in the West Bank allowing only three French supporters out of 120 to reach the city of Ramallah in the West bank.

The rest of the European supporters hope to be allowed access to the Palestinian territories to take part in the activities on support of the Palestinian people who have been under colonial Israeli occupation for almost half a century.

The Israeli Occupation forces (IOF) have full control over the crossings connecting the Palestinian occupied territories with the neighboring countries and thus can at any time cut the Palestinians off from the rest of the world. Let aside, the checkpoints that the IOF sets up on the roads connecting the Palestinian cities and villages. The IOF can at its own sweet will lock or unlock the checkpoints turning the Palestinian cities and villages into disconnected cantons, the Palestinians cannot move out of or into them.

The Wall
The European group through their visit to the Palestinian territories wishes to call upon the international community to provide the Palestinian population with international protection from the Israeli bloody attacks against them, and to implement the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling, which illegalize the Apartheid Wall erected by Israel in Palestinian-owned lands and called to remove it.

The Wall

According to Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign fact sheet "The Apartheid Wall" (updated 29/03/05), the Wall's total length will be some 730 km. Currently, the Wall is being built in the districts of Qulqelia, Tulkarem, Jenin, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem by some 250 bulldozers while measurements in preparation for the Wall are taking place across the West Bank.

The Apartheid Wall costs some $3.4 billion, approximately $4.7 million per kilometer. 245 km of the Wall has already been completed, separating scores of Palestinians from their lands.

Also in the "first phase", Israel has confiscated 36 groundwater wells and at least another 14 wells are threatened for demolition in the Wall's "buffer zone". The lands between the Apartheid Wall and the Green Line have been declared by Israel as a "seam zone" whereby all residents and land owners must obtain a permit to remain in their homes and on their lands.

When completed, the Wall will de facto annex some 47% of the West Bank, isolating communities into Bantustans, enclaves and "military zones".

Nearly 16% of Palestinians in the West Bank will be "outside" the Wall in the de facto annexed areas by Israel and in unbearable living conditions - the loss of land, markets, movement and livelihoods - and faced with expulsion. This includes over 200,000 residents of East Jerusalem, who will be totally isolated from the rest of the West Bank. 98 % of the settler population will be included in the de facto annexed areas.

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Voor actuele informatie: Sonja Zimmermann (Nederlands Palestina Komitee) tel. 06-10936505,
e-mail: karavaan_jeruzalem@hotmail.com

Radiodagboek: http://www.eutopic.lautre.net/coordination/article.php3?id_article=337

Kijk en luister verder op www.eutopic.lautre.net/coordination en klik verder naar de (franstalige) audioblog over de Caravaan.

 
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