The Gas paddle is down to complete Jerusalem Envelope

July 16, 2005

In an arrogant and defiant, yet not so uncharacteristic step, the Israeli government approved recommencement of construction for the Segregation Wall in Jerusalem, overriding an Israeli court injunction to halt all construction pending a ruling concerning the route of the Wall in Jerusalem. The Israeli decision came to accelerate the construction of the Segregation Wall around Jerusalem and to complete it by September 2005. However, the actual significance of the decision lay in the fact that four Palestinian communities (Shu'fat, Anata, Qlandyia & Kfar Aqab) with 55,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites (holding Israeli identification card) will be alienated from the illegally Israeli declared Jerusalem municipal boundary upon the completion of the 'Jerusalem Envelope' plan, which will pave the way literally and illegally for future prospect to redefine Jerusalem municipal boundary once again. See map 1: Jerusalem Envelope

The Israeli government has also issued instruction to all related ministries to facilitate service to the Palestinian Jerusalemites that will be entrapped outside the Jerusalem envelope as a persecution measurement to the anticipated criticism of the Jerusalem envelope plan and allocated 25 million NIS (100USD per individual contrary to the 245,000USD spent on a single illegal Israeli settler evacuated from Gaza) to meet all the needs (medical services, insurance, municipality services, school transportation, new school facilities, unemployment, etc) of Jerusalemites located outside the Jerusalem envelope. The Israeli government has also designated 12 access gates for the detached Jerusalemites to enter and exit Jerusalem, almost 4600 person per gate, to use in order to get to work, schools, hospitals or simply to visit relatives.

Even now, other areas (Al-Ram, Dahiet Al-Barid, Beir Nabala, Jerusalem northwest villages and Al-Shayah neighborhood) threatened by the Segregation Wall or the Jerusalem Envelop project are still waiting on the Israeli court decision regarding their status, which became predictable and somewhat similar to those four communities mentioned above. The Israeli decision to accelerate construction of the Segregation Wall comes as a provocation act especially since it parallel the anniversary decision of the ICJ, which sends a clear and distinctive message to the Palestinians and those involved in the peace process that Israel as it always was 'above the law'.