Human Rights Watch urges you to exercise U.S. influence to prevent the violations of human rights and humanitarian law caused by Israel's construction of the West Bank separation barrier.

Human Rights Watch takes no position on the territorial dispute that lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including any changes in land status that might accompany an eventual peace agreement. But we seek to ensure that the treatment of people living under Israeli occupation conforms to international legal standards. With this in mind, we have impartially and carefully monitored abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law by all parties in the Occupied Territories since 1989.

We recognize that the government of Israel has a right and a duty to protect its civilian population from attack. But it is obliged to do so within the bounds of international human rights and humanitarian law. The separation barrier's route and related access arrangements fail to meet these requirements.

The barrier's route repeatedly deviates from the Green Line, the post-1948 demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank, and is having a profound impact on the ability of the Palestinian residents to exercise fundamental human rights. Each mile that the barrier cuts into the West Bank separates local towns and villages from their lands, services, water, and livelihoods. The World Bank, the U.N., and local and international human rights groups have documented in detail the barrier's harmful impact on local populations. Almost 150,000 people in thirty-one communities have been harmed by the first phase of the barrier. Other phases of the barrier will affect at least 150,000 more.

When Human Rights Watch visited the village of Qaffin in July 2003, it met farmers cut off from their land and unable to travel to apply for the permits needed to reach it. Despite assurances by the Israeli authorities in court documents that access to essential services would be allowed, no travel arrangements were in place for teachers, students, or medical personnel. When Human Rights Watch visited one of the two new barrier gates that enclosed the village, we found a line of fifteen vehicles that Israeli soldiers had held up for several hours. Also waiting in the same line were residents of neighboring Barta'a, who had been allowed to leave their village but were then prevented from passing through the gate to return home.

U.S. pressure on the Israeli government could result in clear, consistent access arrangements that would significantly reduce the barrier's harmful impact on daily life. But Israel has a long record of severe and arbitrary restrictions on freedom of movement, despite repeated commitments to the U.S. and U.N. to improve them.

These practices raise concerns as a matter of both international humanitarian and human rights law. As the U.N. Human Rights Committee the authoritative human rights body on the interpretation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) indicated last month, the applicability of international humanitarian law to the Occupied Territories does not preclude the application of international human rights law (Concluding observations of the Human Rights Committee: Israel (Aug. 21, 2003)).

The Israeli authorities have argued that the separation barrier is a vital element in Israel's defense against suicide bombings and other attacks against civilians in Israel. Although under human rights law freedom of movement can be restricted for security reasons, the restrictions must have a clear legal basis, and be limited to what is necessary and proportionate. As stated by the U.N. Human Rights Committee in its General Comment 27, any limits on freedom of movement cannot reverse the relation between right and restriction, between norm and exception. Yet the barrier embodies the premise of long-term and severe restrictions on the movement of vast numbers of people. It effectively confines tens of thousands of men, women, and children in walled enclaves, and sharply curtails movement for all but a handful of permit-holders. It will have a seriously deleterious effect on the right of access to a livelihood, education, and health and medical services.

The Israeli government has failed to respond publicly to charges that it could adopt less intrusive and less restrictive alternatives to address the security of civilians. In fact, the Israeli State Comptroller published a report in July 2002 strongly criticizing the inadequacy of checkpoint procedures and the lack of army deployment in border areas.

Even if a wall is the least intrusive method available to Israel, as planned the barrier is by definition intrusive because it is being constructed around illegal government sponsored settlements in the West Bank. These intrusions into the West Bank deprive Palestinians of land and as described above are cutting many of them off from services such as education and health care. The Israeli government cannot use security concerns for Israelis living in illegal settlements to justify further encroachments into occupied territory.

Without an urgent modification of current plans, the separation barrier will dramatically increase Palestinian impoverishment by reducing employment, agricultural production and market access, literacy rates, and access to maternal and infant health care. Under customary international law, Israel has a positive obligation to ensure the welfare of residents of the West Bank (Hague Regulations on Land Warfare, Article 43). It is also obliged to ensure the passage of emergency medical services, to respect the sick, to allow the passage of foodstuffs and medical goods, and to facilitate education (Fourth Geneva Convention, Articles 16, 20, 25, 50, 55 and 59).

U.S. loan guarantees to Israel provide an obvious way of exercising U.S. influence to help remedy this situation. Human Rights Watch urges you to exercise the powers granted you under the Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2003 to deduct the costs of the West Bank separation barrier from the loan guarantees. We also urge you to use all means at your disposal to ensure that, if construction of the barrier continues, its path and operational arrangements fully conform to Israel's obligations as an occupying power and under international human rights and humanitarian law.

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth Roth
Executive Director

cc. The Hon. Colin Powell
Secretary of State of the United States

Dr. Condoleezza Rice
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Elliott Abrams,
Special Assistant to the President
Senior Director for Near East, South Asian, and North African Affairs
National Security Council