Abbas warns barrier will not bring Israel security
AFP
Date: 12-29-04
QALQILYA, West Bank (AFP) - Palestinian presidential election favourite Mahmud Abbas called for the tearing down of Israel's West Bank barrier, warning that it would never deliver security.
"If we are to co-exist with the Israelis, this wall must disappear," he told supporters while on the campaign trail in the town of Qalqilya.
"The Berlin Wall was the last racist wall and it fell. We hope to see this wall fall and that peace and security can take its place."
The citizens of Qalqilya have been totally encircled by a combination of towering slabs of concrete and electronic fencing, ruled illegal by the UN's highest legal body.
Abbas had travelled to Qalqilya after addressing a crowd of some 8,000 supporters in the nearby town of Tulkarem where the barrier also came in for fierce attack.
"Neither settlements, nor the wall will bring peace and security," Abbas said during his speech in a football stadium, situated barely 500 meters from the blocks of concrete which make up the barrier in Tulkarem.
"We say to our neighbours (the Israelis) that no matter how many walls and obstacles you build, they will not bring you peace and security."
The barrier -- a montage of concrete, razor wire and electric fencing -- is being built across the West Bank in what Israel says is a bid to prevent attacks on its territory by Palestinian militants.
It points to a sharp fall in recent suicide bombings as proof of its success. Figures broadcast by army radio Wednesday showed that only 14 attacks were carried out in Israel during the last 12 months as against 25 in 2003.
The Palestinians however regard its route, often jutting deep into their territory, as proof of its real intent to appropriate land and prejudge the borders of their promised future state.
The UN's International Court of Justice ruled in July that parts of the barrier built on the Palestinian side of the internationally recognised border between Israel and the West Bank are illegal.
Israel vowed to ignore the non-binding verdict but has modified its route after rulings from its own supreme court.
Abbas, who is standing for the dominant Fatah faction in the January 9 contest to succeed Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestinian Authority, also reiterated his vision of an independent state on all the land occupied by Israel since 1967, with east Jerusalem as its capital.
Before his appearance at the stadium, Abbas also paid a visit to the local refugee camp where he met the parents of "martyrs" of the conflict with Israel and with members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Fatah.
Abbas was accorded a hero's welcome in the camp, and was carried briefly on the shoulders of one of the refugees.
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