An
Israeli newspaper on Thursday quoted unnamed security sources as saying
that the army was proposing a wall to divide Hebron into two parts -
the Israeli-controlled side and the Palestinian Authority-administered
side.
As many as 500 Jewish settlers, many of them
religious students studying at a local Talmudic school, or Yeshiva,
live in the city under constant army protection amid the estimated
170,000 Palestinians, making up the population of Hebron.
According
to security officials, interviewed by the Haaretz newspaper, the
Israeli army has already presented a plan for the construction of the
wall to Israeli attorney-general Menachem Mazus for a ruling.
Idea
The Israeli army has confirmed the Haaretz report in principle.
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Palestinians fear the wall will
lead to ethnic cleansing |
Eitan
Arusi, an Israeli army spokesman told Aljazeera.net's Khalid Amayreh
that the army was "entertaining an idea to resolve the friction between
Arabs and Jews in Hebron".
"It is only an idea, it is not a plan, there are no blueprints or anything like that."
Amayreh said the construction of the wall would
ghettoise and in effect cut off some 30,000 Palestinians living in the
old town from the rest of the city.
Palestinians also fear that the erection of such
a separation barrier would lead to a gradual but massive ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians, especially in the vicinity of the Ibrahimi
mosque.
Gigantic catastrophe
Israel is already erecting a barrier inside the West
Bank, which it says helps stop Palestinian fighters from reaching its
cities.
The International Court of Justice said the project,
being built on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war, is
illegal.
Hebron mayor Mustafa Abd al-Nabi al-Natshe told
Aljazeera.net that the construction of such a wall in Hebron would be a
"gigantic catastrophe".
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"They want to decimate the lives of 170,000 Palestinians for the sake of 400 Jewish fanatics"
Mustafa Abd al-Nabi al-Natshe,
Hebron mayor |