CONTACT:
Mitchell Plitnick  510-465-1777

Jewish Voice for Peace: New route of Israel's wall better, but serious concerns remain

OAKLAND, CA - February 23, 2005 - Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest grassroots Jewish peace group in the United States, welcomes Israel's decision to bring the route of its wall closer to Israel's internationally recognized borders.

JVP calls on Israel to go further, stating serious concerns about the Wall's new route. While the new route encompasses much less West Bank territory, it nevertheless extends around the Israeli settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, leaving the new route as a continuing impediment to the contiguity of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. The new route cuts off East Jerusalem from the West Bank, thereby leaving the Palestinian suburbs of A-Ram and Abu Dis, which are dependent on East Jerusalem for commerce, without access vital to their economies.

Mitchell Plitnick, co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said, "By including Ma'ale Adumim within the Jerusalem section of the Wall, the Sharon government almost entirely cuts the West Bank in half and excludes access to Jerusalem from the West Bank. In doing so, the Israeli government takes an action the Palestinians will understand as a bad-faith effort to establish a 'fact on the ground,' making all of Jerusalem exclusively Israeli and removing the city's status from a future negotiating agenda."

While the revised route proposed for the Wall is a substantial improvement from the previous route, which isolated as many as 90,000 Palestinians cut, it still crosses the Green Line, the internationally recognized border between Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and would leave about 10,000 Palestinians residing between Israel and the Wall totally cut off from the rest of the West Bank.

Today, JVP reiterated its view that Israel's Wall stands in the way of the peace process. Only an end to the occupation and a resolution to the long conflict that fully takes Palestinian and Israeli interests into consideration will bring a lasting peace and long-term security for both parties

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About Jewish Voice for Peace
Founded in 1996, Jewish Voice for Peace is a national grassroots peace organization dedicated to promoting a US foreign policy in the Middle East based on peace, democracy, human rights and respect for international law. With some 10,000 supporters and members, JVP's board of Jewish American and Israeli advisors includes Pulitzer and Tony award winner Tony Kushner, actor Ed Asner, poet Adrienne Rich as well as other respected rabbis, artists, scholars and activists.