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Report castigates Israel's human rights violations

Amnesty findings * Israel's 600km fence and curfews have cut Palestinians off from vital routes to health-care facilities, stores, workplaces, schools and farmer's fields in violation of international law. * Precise missile strikes on terrorists and other control measures have failed to reach the goal of stability.

Israeli military checkpoints, curfews and a new fence sealing off large parts of the West Bank are violating Palestinians' human rights, Amnesty International said in a report released yesterday.

The 79-page report by the human rights group details the impact of military restrictions on the movement of Palestinians nearly three years into fighting that has heightened Israel's emphasis on shielding itself from would-be attackers.

Among its recommendations, Amnesty is urging Israel to halt construction of the 600km fence along its frontier with the West Bank, saying the barrier of razor wire, walls, fences and trenches is a major hindrance for tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Israeli officials declined to comment until they had reviewed the report. Israel has defended the new security fence and other restrictions on the movement of Palestinians as necessary to prevent further attacks. Suicide bombings have killed 397 Israelis in the past three years.

The Amnesty report says Israel's military measures have failed to stop the attacks, while causing serious harm to the Palestinian economy.

Based on interviews with Palestinians and Israelis, including medical workers, human rights experts, government officials, journalists and community leaders, the report documents the effects of roadblocks and other barriers that have divided Palestinian communities and turned previously short trips into hours-long journeys.

Half of working-age Palestinians are unemployed and about 60 percent of the 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza live in poverty -- earning US$2 a day or less -- and depend on aid from the UN and other international organizations, welfare and charity, the report said.

The report calls restrictions on movement a human-rights violation because they deny people reliable access to food, water, health care, education and work.

"Although less well documented than other human rights violations, such as killings, torture and detentions, the economic and social consequences of the restrictions are devastating," the report said.

Israel also has violated its obligations under international law as an occupying power to ensure the population has food and medicine, the report said.

Israeli blockades -- which include about 300 checkpoints, along with dirt barriers, cement blocks and sewage-filled trenches -- are also forcing people to take dangerous journeys via backroads where they often encounter Israeli soldiers, the report said. Such trips, often on foot, are impossible for the sick, elderly and those carrying heavy packages or children.

Prolonged curfews have ruined businesses. The longest curfew, Amnesty says, shut down Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, for five months in one stretch.

Leveling a further blow, those who fall back on subsistence farming are not able to reach their land in some areas where it now lies on the "Israeli" side of the barrier of fences and trenches being built along the West Bank line.
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