After a five year freeze, the Israeli government is going to resume building the apartheid wall in the area of Gush Etzion settlement in the occupied West Bank. According to Colonel Ofer Hindi, construction will also restart around Ma’aleh Adumim, near Jerusalem, next year.
The senior army officer was speaking at a court hearing on the legality of the wall. “Despite the relative quiet in Jerusalem,” he said, “the fence [sic] outlines in Ma’aleh Adumim are a clear security necessity.”
A previous court decision in Israel decreed that the state “can in principle erect the ‘security fence’ as a precaution aimed at preventing the entry of terrorists and other attackers”.
If completed as planned, the wall will be over 760 kilometres long. Construction began in 2002 and, to-date, 400 kilometres have been built.
The wall has been dubbed the “apartheid” wall by critics. It has aroused national and international anger and, in July 2004, the International Criminal Court declared that the wall is illegal and demanded that it be dismantled.