Israel's Wall

Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have both come out with strongly worded statements challenging the separation barrier being built by Israel in and along the West Bank.

HRW charges that "the barrier's path and operating arrangements violate the freedom of movement of Palestinians, endangering their access to food, water, education, and medical services. With every mile the barrier cuts into the West Bank, towns, villages, and residents become separated from their lands, crops, services, water, and jobs."

The criticism from the UN comes in the form of a scathing report by John Dugard, the UN's Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Like the settlements it seeks to protect," the report argues, "the Wall is manifestly intended to create facts on the ground. It may lack an act of annexation, as occurred in the case of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But its effect is the same: annexation. Annexation of this kind goes by another name in international law - conquest."