For more info: John Reese, jreese@scn.org, 206-568-7110 or Community Action Network can@drizzle.com

This link is to a translation of a May 23rd article in Yediot Ahronot titled “A Wall in the Heart.” electronicintifada.net/v2/article1546.shtml

These links have additional information on the wall including maps. www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html , www.poica.org/casestudies/Changing%20Wall%20Path%2016-06-03/index.htm

The Israeli government continues to build a massive wall to surround Palestinian areas and turn their ghettos into large prisons. Twice as high and planned-to-be three times as long as the Berlin Wall, Israel's latest project of dispossession has already uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinian fruit and olive trees and has destroyed or isolated from Palestinian farmers tens of thousands of dunams of farmland, de facto confiscating the Palestinian people's most fertile land and most important water wells. Entire farming communities are losing all of their agricultural land.

More statistics: 10% of the West Bank will be confiscated by and for Israel by the path of this wall. As of December 2002, some 11,500 dunams of land have been razed for the footprint of the wall, and 83,000 trees uprooted. Over 31 groundwater wells will be in the confiscated areas of the wall's first phase. A number of villages are to lose their ONLY source of water. Land confiscation, destruction, and severe restriction of movement will translate into the loss of over 6,500 jobs. Over 100 buildings have thus far been destroyed to make way for the wall, mainly shops, an important source of income for families and communities At least 17 Palestinian communities will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line. Some communities will be surrounded on all sides by the wall.

If completed as planned, some 95,000 Palestinians will be isolated. A number of small villages have been informed that their proximity to the wall will deem most of their community demolished. Courtesy of PENGON. For more information and statistics, see: www.pengon.org

The ISM invites you to join the Palestinian people in coordinated direct-action, nonviolent resistance to this strangulation, oppression and affront to peace initiatives. While leaders talk about peace and the “road map”, take part in working for justice on the ground and paving the road to freedom. For more information: www.palsolidarity.org