Peace Train: 'Apartheid barrier' - People of Jayyous hurt by wall's relocation

By By LeRoy Moore, For the Colorado Daily, Friday, August 29, 2008 - Israeli authorities recently announced that they will soon move a portion of the "separation barrier" that snakes through the West Bank dividing land available to Israelis from land to which Palestinians are confined. One of the affected communities is Jayyous, a Palestinian agricultural town located in the West Bank about 25 miles northeast of Tel Aviv. Will relocation of the barrier be good news or bad news for the 4,000 residents of Jayyous whose families have farmed the area for hundreds of years?

I visited Jayyous in May 2007. I learned that construction in 2003 of what the Palestinians call the "apartheid barrier" on the slope below the town had destroyed huge swaths of prime farm land and ancient olive groves and cut the people off from their sources of water.

To work the remaining orchards and fields on the other or Israeli side of the fence, Jayyous residents have ever since been required to wait in line and be scrutinized at a military checkpoint open usually but not always for three brief periods each day.

Some of the people have given up on farming. Unemployment is rife and the local economy is on the skids. There are rumors that Israel will build factories on its side of the fence to provide jobs for the captive people of Jayyous.

The barrier erected near Jayyous in 2003 violates international law in that it has shifted the de facto border of Israel well into the Palestinian side of the "Green Line" that since 1948 has been recognized as the official boundary separating Israel from the Palestinian West Bank.

Word that Israel would relocate the barrier stirred hopes in Jayyous that it might be moved to the Green Line.

Such hopes, however, have been dashed by recent news. The newspaper Haaretz reported on July 29 that though the fence near Jayyous will be relocated, it will not be moved to the Green Line.

After the relocation, three-fourths of the land tended by Jayyous residents as well as all their water supplies will still remain on the Israeli side of the barrier, accessible only through a single checkpoint.

I am writing to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging her to intervene with the government of Israel to insist that the barrier be moved to the Green Line.

I invite you who read this article to do the same.

LeRoy Moore is a consultant with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.