Israel's unholy wall

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/03/israels_unholy_wall/

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"IN REALITY, the Holy Land doesn't need walls, but bridges," said Pope John Paul II. Kofi Annan has strongly criticized Israel's separation barrier. The UN General Assembly voted to condemn it 144-4. The Security Council would have but for a US veto.

President Bush has referred to it as "a wall snaking its way through the West Bank." He later warned Israel not to prejudice final negotiations of the road map "with the placement of walls and fences." The United States has since decided to deduct $289 million from the $9 billion in loan guarantees appropriated for Israel this year because of the wall and continued settlement construction.

Israelis refer to it as a security fence or barrier necessary to protect Israelis from suicide bombers. Palestinians refer to it as an apartheid wall stealing land and water resources and turning towns and villages into prisons. Some supporters now refer to it as a "wall of peace" while detractors call it a "weapon of mass destruction."

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"If built according to current maps, the wall will confiscate 55 percent of the Palestinian West Bank, including eight critical water wells. It will destroy or confiscate homes, farms, and livelihoods. It will levae hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on the Israeli side of the wall and completely cut off many Palestinian people from each other and from their own land. Some places, like the city of Qalqilya and the village of Jayouus, are already completely surrounded by the wall. Residents have to pass through a gate controlled by the whims of an Israeli soldier. Or in the case of a recent Jewish holiday, the gate is simply locked. No one gets in or out."

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"Uri Avneri, a former Israeli Knesset member, writes: "The wall is not built in order to secure the safety of Israeli citizens but in order to gain hegemony and control over the water resources, for the sake of the de facto annexation of the settlements to Israel, to bisect the Palestinian territories into small isolated enclaves void of territorial contiguity and viability, and in order to create a border zone `clean' of Palestinians."

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:crazy:

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Really? I knew it was a land grab, but I didn't know Sharon was so...grabby.

And I have been saying it for years.

Israel should have started building the Peace Fence years ago. Many lives would have been saved. There is a reason that so few murderers enter Israel from Gaza. At least they're finally doing the right thing now. Build it faster and don't stop until it's done.

Fits your post to a T, as it were.

Why? Forget the path for a second, would you oppose walling them off along the Green Line for instance?

Nothing quite like LT coming around the right side of the line, leaving some hapless RB in his wake on the way to separating the QB fron the ground, his senses and, sometimes, the ball.

Yup, can't have a good DEFENSE without a decent Blitz.

Or were you referring to the German "lightning strike" tactic? Because, if you were, that would be very odd since, while it is a proven and effective military tactic under some circumstances, in the instant case it is the precise OPPOSITE of what I am advocating. Nothing could be more unlike a massive military ADVANCE to crush one's enemies than the construction, over a long period of time, of a stationary fence to defend oneself from their advances.

So I hope that you are referring to football because otherwise I will be compelled to conclude that your seemingly nonsensical post is simply a personal attack and another grotesque example of the tired and hurtful tactic of drawing non-existant parallels between Jews and Nazis.