UN-Truth

The JPost has just contributed a very interesting bit of news and analyis to recent reports that work on The Wall has stopped because of a supposed “budgetary shortfall”.

In an article entitled “Kilometers of W. Bank security fence completed since July: 0″, written by Tovah Lazaroff, the JPost reveals that “Not a single kilometer of the West Bank security fence has been completed in the past four months, The Jerusalem Post has learned. This week, the Defense Ministry told three contractors with signed agreements worth NIS 100 million not to begin scheduled work on the fence in the South Hebron Hills – due to lack of funds, according to Dudi Barrel, director-general of the Israel Infrastructure Contractor’s Association. In spite of that claim, as well as media allegations that the Defense Ministry lacks money in its fence budget for this year, the Prime Minister’s Office told the Post that NIS 500m. of the 2007 budget for the barrier remains in the Defense Ministry’s coffer. Both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Defense Ministry said they could not comment on the delay in the work on the South Hebron Hills portion of the fence.
“In general, work on the West Bank barrier, which has earned Israel international condemnation even as it has contributed to a significant decrease in terrorist attacks, has slowed to a trickle.
“Last year, the Defense Ministry completed 102 km. of the fence. Some 10 months into 2007, however, only an additional 48 km. – just 6 percent of the entire planned route of the fence – have been completed. Another 80 km. are under construction. Of those 80 km. the Defense Ministry had hoped to complete 50 km. this year, but it now expects to fall short of that goal. It would not say how much the shortfall would be. Earlier this year, the estimated target date for the project’s completion was moved from 2008 to 2010 – meaning it will take the government eight years to build the fence which was first approved by the cabinet in 2002. As of this week only 56.9%, or 450 km. of the 790-km. route, has been completed, the Defense Ministry told the Post. This response exactly mirrors information given the Post in the beginning of July, when it made the same query. Of the remaining 260 km. of the planned route of the fence, some 100 km. are tied up in petitions before the High Court of Justice. An additional 160 km., the Defense Ministry said, are still in the planning phase. The Defense Ministry, so far, has offered no explanation as to why work on the fence has slowed down in 2007 compared with 2006 …” The JPost article on the slowdown in construction of the Wall is posted here.

A friend who is an expert on The Wall said on Sunday that the IDF website had just suddenly changed its map (do a google search for “seamzone”, he told me), to remove an illustration that showed a large chunk of West Bank land south of Hebron closed off to Palestinians by a proposed routing of The Wall. Now, he said, there is no indication that any Wall construction will happen on this Hebron-area land — and no explanation of this sudden revision.
[I'm not sure if this is a more recent or an earlier one, but see one slow-loading version of the IDF map here].

The JPost article reports an interesting hypothesis that continuing to build The Wall is seen as less important than turning to the construction of some kind of defense against missiles, such as the relatively small and crude Kassam rockets that are shot regularly at Israel’ “Western Negev” these days.

It is intriguing, because the U.S. is on a crusade to persuade the “good guys” of this world to share in its missile defense shield…

Could the U.S. also be using this as leverage to stop Israeli work on The Wall in advance of Middle East peace talks (or “a meeting”) it hopes to convene in Annapolis later this year?

Filed under: Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians, Register of damages due to The Wall