Israeli sources reported on Tuesday night that senior Israeli military officials are considering an alternative plan for the Illegal Wall, by sealing it around settlements and settlement blocks to keep them within the Israeli controlled side of the Wall.Israeli online daily, Haaretz, reported that the military is considering abandoning a plan to include bulges of settlements in the Wall, but is considering an alternative plan that intends to seal the Illegal Wall around the settlements of Immanuel and Kedumin to include them with the Israeli side of the Wall.
The plan includes annexing more Palestinian lands in order to construct new sections of the Wall around the settlements.
Also, Israel plans to keep Ariel settlement bloc, in the northern part of the West Bank, and other settlements within the Israeli-controlled side of the Wall. This plan is a complete deviation from a government plan approved by the Israeli cabinet in 2003.
According to the Israeli High court of Justice, the original plan runs along the Green Line, but the new one is goes deeper into the Palestinian occupied territories. However, the actual construction of the Wall in the past has bore no realtion to this original plan- instead it alreading snakes it's path throughout the West Bank, annexing vast swathes of Palestinian land and imprisoning whole Palestinian cities, towns and villages.
Haaretz also said that the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, recently approved additional changes to the route of the Wall in order to add two sections of settlements to the Wall, one section from Beit Aryeh to Ariel, and the other from Alfei Menashe to Kedumin.
The Wall section in that area is still not completed and there is a 6-kilometer stretch which is still open. Hagai Alon, a diplomatic aide to the Israeli Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, contacted Shaul Arieli, an Israeli army Colonel reserve and asked him to prepare an alternate route of the Wall, Haaretz added.
Arieli submitted a proposal last month, and stated that the United States opposes the current route of the Wall which was approved by the Israeli cabinet last year, since it totally blocks the geographical contiguity of the Palestinian areas and makes viable future Palestinian state impossible.
Arieli also said that if petitions against the Wall route are submitted to the High Court, it would be difficult to dismiss them since they pose humanitarian problems.
He said that Israel must seal the gap between the settlements of Ofarim and Elkana and suggested that it should form “three special security areas”; the first around Ariel settlement bloc, the second around the settlements of Immanuel and Karmei Shomron, while the third near the settlements of Beit Aryeh and Ofraim.
According to Arieli, this plan seals the gap, maintains the Israeli security needs and maintains the security of the settlers in any future conflicts in the West Bank. What he fails to mention is that it is entirely illegal.
