• The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the West Bank notified several families in Bethlehem last week that they will be confiscating their land and houses because they fall in the path of the GREAT APARTHEID WALL they are constructing south of Rachel tomb to permanently separate Bethlehem from greater Jerusalem and the whole West Bank from Israel. Apart from the land used for the wall, the area involved is 3000 dunums (750 acres) taken from Bethlehem Municipality alone. Many more acres from Beit Jala and whole villages north and east of Bethlehem will be isolated and become part of Jerusalem.
   
• The Association has written to the White house (See our letter to President Bush), the State Department and Congress protesting this robbery and strangulation of our historic town of Bethlehem. We appeal to all members to also protest vigorously to their Congressmen and Senators. Here are the addresses:
  • The Honorable (Name of Your Congressman)
    Rayburn Building,
    Washington,  D.C. 20515
    To get the exact address, phone number and e-mail go to: www.house.gov
  • The Honorable (Name of Your Senator)
    To get the name and exact address, phone and e-mail go to: www.senate.gov
    
     

• The Apartheid wall Israel is constructing puts the Berlin wall to shame! It is 8 to 10 meters high (25 to 30 ft), 3 meters thick at the base, with guard towers every 200 to 300 meters, razor wire on top and a 90 meter cleared swath of land in front and a supply road behind it.

 
              ISRAEL'S GREAT APARTHEID WALL        John Reese: www.seattlecan.org

• One would assume that if Israel wants to build a wall to keep its neighbors out it would build it on its own land. Clearly, security is not the main reason for the wall. The wall is being built on Palestinian territory many miles beyond the green line. It is designed to rob Palestinians of another big chunk of their land. About 150 miles stretch of the wall has been built in the northern West Bank. In the Jenin, Tulkarem and Qualqilia areas thousands of acres of the best agricultural land, many villages with thousands of olive trees, green houses and water wells have been defacto annexed to Israel behind the wall. A woman harvesting olives with her family said: "We teach our children from this land. Our children learn from this land."  Even though this land has been in her family for generations this is the last time anyone from her family will ever pick olives in this area. The Wall will cut a 100 yards path through the middle of their land. The land on the inside of the wall will be gone and the land behind the wall will be inaccessible. Near the village of Jayyus, 15,000 trees will be lost, they were a source of income for over 300 families. This is just one of 30 villages that will suffer due to the stealing of land by the Israeli government to build this Wall of Apartheid. "We have feelings of despair and sadness. My father and his father and his father before owned this land. Now what will I give my children?" Palestinian man who is harvesting his land with his children for the last time.
   
• The IOF have now started construction around Bethlehem. They are grabbing the opportunity while the U.S and Britain are beating the drums of war against Iraq to permanently cantonize the West Bank and rob more land. It is evidently coordinated with the U.S. Administration who are supplying the billions of dollars needed using our taxes to strip Palestinians of the little land they have left.
   
• On February 16, the IOF handed the residents of Bethlehem military orders that will strangulate the city of Bethlehem by confiscating its northern entrance and annexing it to Israel. The plan was discussed in the media in September 11^th 2002, when the Israeli security cabinet decided to keep Rachel’s Tomb under Israeli control by including the tomb within the Separation zone.
   
• Parcels of the blocks of land seized at the entrance of Bethlehem

Block No	Parcel No	Owner
28103	20	Anton Jeries Anostas/Saleh Elias
	68	Ali Ahmad Shakhtor Mo’ti
28029	19	Rougina Handal
	32	Said Murad Al-Siriani
	29	Islamic Waqef
28106	20	Anton Anostas/ Shokri Nasser
	21	Mayor Hanna Nasser & his brothers
	22	Victoria Elias Freij
	23	Sa’dy Barakat
	53	Armenian Monastery

To the Most Reverend Presidents of Bishops Conferences:
This is an urgent appeal!
Please, do whatever you can. through your own government, with the Israeli embassy in your Country, with the Israeli government itself.

A Berlin Wall Isolating Bethlehem

This is an S.O.S. cry!
From Jerusalem, on the 19th of February, 2003.
Michael Sabbah,
Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Israel divides Bethlehem with a wall of concrete, fear and suspicion.
By Justin Huggler
The Independent
22 February 2003

As you arrive from Jerusalem, the first street of Bethlehem, lined with old, carved limestone houses, is deserted. Where the tourists used to throng, the restaurants are boarded up. In a few months, a high concrete wall will run down the middle of this street, blocking a neighbourhood of Bethlehem from the rest of the city.

The inhabitants here, predominantly from Bethlehem's fast-dwindling Palestinian Christian community, will be cut off from their city by a concrete wall guarded by Israeli army patrols. They will be allowed to cross into Bethlehem only through an Israeli army checkpoint, with permits the army can issue or withhold as it sees fit. They will not be allowed into Jerusalem, on the other side of the pocket of land they will be walled off in.

Amjad Awwad will be cut off from the mini-market he runs. His house is on one side of the street, the mini-market on the other. After the wall is built he will need the Israeli army's permission to go to work and to go home again. But that is not his only worry.

"They told us if you want a doctor in the night the hospital will have to phone the Israeli government and arrange permission for him to be allowed in. If it's a heart attack, we'll die before they allow the ambulance in."

After the wall is built, the Bethlehem municipality will even need military permission to send trucks to collect the rubbish. The wall is part of what has become known as Israel's "Berlin Wall", electrified fences and concrete walls the Israeli government is building around the West Bank to seal it off and stop Palestinian militants crossing into Israel.

Here, as elsewhere, the wall is not following the 1967 border but dipping deep into the West Bank. The reason it is slicing into Bethlehem, say Israeli authorities, is so Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish pilgrimage site inside the city, will be on the Israeli side of the wall, guaranteeing easy access for pilgrims.

For the 500 or so people who will be cut off from the rest of Bethlehem, the wall is a disaster. The order to build it was announced this week, while the world's attention was on Iraq. The Israeli cabinet decision to include Rachel's Tomb was made public on 11 September, the anniversary terrorist attacks on America.

No coincidence, says the Mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, who will be cut off from his relatives by the wall. His son-in-law lives in the area that will be walled off.
"Why do they need the wall?" he asks. "That whole area around Rachel's Tomb is already under full Israeli control under the Oslo Accords." The tomb is already surrounded by a concrete wall, and there are Israeli army guard-posts on top of the buildings around it.

"Why do they need another wall unless they have hidden intentions?" says Mayor Nasser, suggesting the real reason for walling off the area is to force the people to leave, so the land can be annexed to Israel. That sentiment is echoed by Dr Jad Issac, of the Applied Research Institute, Jerusalem, a Palestinian organization that makes maps of Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories using satellite images it buys commercially. They show Bethlehem being surrounded by fences to protect new settlement suburbs of Jerusalem built in the occupied West Bank.

"There will be no room for Bethlehem to expand naturally," Dr. Issac says. "The population density will become so high people will start leaving freely. We will be forced to migrate."

For more details go to the Applied Research Institute Website: www.arij.org