West Bank barrier must go: Oxfam

[Violet_Crumble]

Oxfam has released a report which supports the International Court of Justice ruling that the security barrier isolating the West Bank is illegal.

The humanitarian group is demanding that Israel obey the international law ruling made five years ago this week, and dismantle the barrier where it encroaches on Palestinian land annexed by Israel in 1967.

But Israel's Supreme Court holds that the wall is legal, although in several cases has ordered that the route be changed.

Oxfam says that at least 13 Palestinian communities are still denied access to land, water or crops that were once theirs.

On the western edge of the West Bank is the small farming village of Jayus, which houses about 3,500 people. It flanks the security fence that separates Palestinian land from Israel.

For seven years the residents have been cut off from about 75 per cent of their original land, which now lies on the other side of the fence. Gone with it are the six wells the community once relied on for water.

Mayyada Qutab who works for Lifesource, a community organisation trying to find solutions to the loss of local water at Jayus, says residents have to rely on water from another community well that is barely 200 metres from an industrial dump.

"If it is not now polluted water, in the future it will be polluted," she said.

"Imagine that there is no land, and there is no water in Jayus."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/10/2622739.htm

Link to Oxfam report: Five Years of Illegality