| In 2002, Israel decided to build a wall along the “green line” that was the border between Israel and the West Bank before 1967 and the Six Day War. From Qalqiliyah to Bethlehem via Jerusalem, this wall is now part of the landscape and the daily lives of locals, with its border crossings, long lines, and separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians. This security barrier is twice as long as the green line and does not resolve either security problems or forty-year-old territorial disagreements. This 26-foot (8-meter) concrete wall makes 3-mile (5-kilometer) incursions into Palestinian territory. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague declared it illegal and asked for it to be dismantled. Since the beginning of the 1970s, expansion of the Israeli outposts has been constant. Today some 450,000 Israelis live on land claimed by the Palestinians. Terrorist attacks, kidnappings, and rocket fire plunge Israeli society into fear. For many, the construction of this wall, like the recent military operations in the south of Lebanon and in Gaza, is a response to the lack of security and violence of which they are the targets. For others, only land concessions could bring peace. But this peace, the condition for which is the creation of a Palestinian state adhering to its 1967 borders, will remain elusive so long as part of the Palestinian leadership holds the destruction of Israel is an avowed objective.
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