To Palestinians, the West Bank’s barrier is just a wall of isolation. It has been frequently slammed by different parties, but the latest criticism was from Amnesty International, which accused Israel of “widespread human rights abuses”.
The Amnesty report, released as the Middle East marked the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, broke no new ground but warned that continued construction of the barrier risks prolonging the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel was never concerned with the 2004 International Court of Justice’s ruling that the so-called security wall is illegal as it runs through occupied territory. Instead of removing the illegal barrier, Israeli officials alleged that it could be dismantled under a future peace agreement.
But Amnesty said Palestinian homes are being demolished and Israeli settlements, also ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, are being sanctioned as fences and walls are diverted around them. The rights group added that the barrier has been deliberately built to seize Palestinian territories amounting to 10 percent of the occupied West Bank in what it described as a state-sponsored land grab.
"Israel's ... security concerns are no excuse for blatant violations of international law, nor the mistreatment of thousands of Palestinians in a massive program of collective punishment,” said Kate Allen, Amnesty’s British Director.
The building of the separation wall started 40 years ago, when Israel claimed that it was simply occupying a free land and started building the barrier along the West Bank, isolating hundreds of thousands of Arabs. The barrier, mostly razor wire-tipped fences and shorter sections of concrete walls, already stretches for 220 miles and is planned to cover 450 miles when finished.
According to the Amnesty report, titled "Enduring Occupation -- Palestinians under siege in the West Bank", the wall, if completed as planned, would surround twelve West Bank villages housing 31,400 people, more than half of them Palestinians living within half a kilometer of it.
Even though the Israeli military claims that its soldiers are ordered to automatically assist any humanitarian case, Amnesty slammed Israel's policy of mobile checkpoints which it said directly cause deaths by imposing unjustified delays on Palestinians trying to get to hospital.
The checkpoints and roadblocks across the area are considered constraints for the movement of Palestinians and directly affect their economy. Most of the Palestinians residing in the area are currently dependent on aid with less quantity of low quality necessity food. Rights groups are concerned that the separation wall would only push the Palestinian community towards collapsing. The Amnesty report said that Israel is “exacerbating the increasingly fragile conditions in which Palestinians live and work, resulting in levels of despair, poverty and food insecurity never seen before in the territories”.
“International action is urgently needed to address the widespread human rights abuses being committed under the occupation, and which are fuelling resentment and despair among a predominantly young Palestinian populations,” said Amnesty’s Middle East Director, Malcolm Smart.
The international human rights group urged the Israelis to halt the building of the wall and remove the built parts gradually in order to stop demolishing the homes of the Palestinians. The report also asked for a deployment of an “international human rights monitoring mechanism” to manage the current situation.”
“This must be backed up with a commitment to investigate, prosecute, through the exercise of universal jurisdiction, those who commit war crimes or other crimes under the international law”, Amnesty said.
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