Israelis join Palestinian appeal against the wall

Meanwhile, an explosion tore apart a Palestinian car in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least three people, witnesses and medics said.

Witnesses had reported at least two blasts as well as gunfire and a power outage as Israeli aircraft flew over the area, not far from the Jewish settlement of Netzarim.

The cause of the blasts was not immediately known. The Israeli army had no immediate comment.

Medics said they pulled three bodies from the mangled car.

Three Palestinian militants were killed in an Israeli missile strike in the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
Wall case

The Palestinians don’t expect the appeal to sway the High Court, which has thrown out dozens of other cases filed so far on behalf of thousands of Palestinians isolated by jogs in the 180 km (110 miles) of the wall built to date.

The network of fences and walls will be Israel’s rampart against Palestinian suicide bombers, the government says. But since the wall often snakes well into the West Bank, Palestinians call it a ruse to annex territory with Jewish settlements that Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.
Insurance against attacks

The idea of a high-tech wall as insurance against militant attack is as popular in Mevasseret Zion, flanking an open rural border easily reached by Palestinians from villages visible a km (mile) or two away, as elsewhere in Israel.

But unlike most, Mevasseret Zion’s Israelis have prized their ties with nearby Palestinians for decades and fear they could come undone by a planned loop in the wall that would cut villagers off from land rather than stick to the 1967 West Bank boundary.

Thirty townsfolk, backed by hundreds of signatories on a petition, have joined an appeal in Israel’s High Court filed by Beit Surik, the nearest West Bank village, and seven others to shift the wall to unused scrub hillside along the frontier.

"These Palestinians never sent terror to us. They are faces we know. No one can claim they are not people of peace," said Shai Dror, 60, a landscaper who co-launched the petition drive in this upscale suburb just off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv motorway.
Bitterness over wall

But he voiced concern that bitterness over the wall would feed militant sentiment and foment violence in an area that has been quiet during three years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"They have worked among us and sold their produce here for many years. They are not abstract threats like for most Israelis. Pushing the people of Beit Surik to the wall would end up exploding in our faces," Dror said.

On Feb. 29, the High Court ordered work on the wall segment suspended for a week while it mulls the appeal.
Crude maps deposited in village raise alarm

Nearby Palestinian villagers woke up one February morning to find maps scattered about showing they were about to be sealed off from olive groves that stretch down terraced slopes and across a valley just below the "Green Line" border.

One of the migrant workers who slip into Mevasseret Zion daily handed the map he had picked up to his employer.

The petition drive gained momentum last week after a World Court hearing into the wall’s legality and the killings by Israeli troops of two Palestinians in a crowd who tried to stop army bulldozers tearing up farmland requisitioned for the fence.

Dror set up a Web site and the town newspaper has run notices to explain the petition campaign and then the resort to the High court after debate in community meetings.
Support of anarchists

The petition has elicited not only the predictable support of anarchists, who have joined anti-wall protests, but middle-class residents from the moderate right to left reflecting Israeli society at large, organizers say.

Hagai Snir, a community activist coordinating the Israeli role in the appeal, said the gist of the challenge was that the wall should run along slopes plunging below the end of town because Israeli soldiers at lookout points could easily spot and pre-empt any attempts to breach it.

Israel’s government counters that the wall must be built further into the West Bank to provide a security buffer.

Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to sneak into Mevasseret Zion for work as laborers, gardeners and domestic workers, after scanning the approach for police and waiting for the all-clear by mobile phone from waiting Israeli employers.

"Of course the fence will go up. It will hurt us. But we at least want to keep our land. Otherwise there can be only pain and violence. We are grateful to Israelis here who joined our case. They are good people," said Mohammed, a builder.