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The Archbishop of Canterbury visited Bethlehem today, passing, as all travellers now have to do, through the wall put up by the State of Israel which separates the town from Jerusalem. He and other church leaders made the journey to reassure the people of Bethlehem, who are Palestinians, that they are not forgotten, and to say that "the wall... is a sign of the things which are deeply wrong in the human heart itself."
Earlier this year, a group travelled to Bethlehem with the Amos Trust, and saw for themselves the huge impact the wall is having on the everyday lives of Palestinians. Garth Hewitt, Tony Neeves and Ian Hamilton report here, in words and images, on the Bethlehem section of the wall. They write...Israel started building a security or separation fence in 2002. Israel's stated purpose was to protect itself from attack by Palestinians. The "fence" is actually in places a concrete wall eight meters high. The wall includes watchtowers, floodlights and electronic detectors. In places, it has an electrified top to stop children from scaling it – amazingly, they had found ways of doing so.
At 250 miles long, the wall is costing £1m a mile to build and will be completed in the next few months. The International Court of Justice has said the wall is illegal. It said this two years ago. Israel has ignored this judgment and continued to build. International allies have largely turned a blind eye.
The wall is not linear but is a complex of walls that create enclaves. Some 55,000 people in East Jerusalem alone will be trapped in these enclaves on the wrong side of the wall. In total, it is estimated that the wall will leave more than 400,000 Palestinians dispossessed and isolated. Many villagers are already cut off not only from the land they live off, but also from their water supply.
Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, says the wall is irreversible. It is clearly not a border for security but a political border, built, in most places, on occupied Palestinian land.
To see images and commentary on the wall, click here.
Links
> The Amos Trust
> Open Bethlehem
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