Gwen Ackerman, Reuters

ABU DIS, West Bank, 14 January 2004 — Tearful Palestinians watched cranes lower huge concrete slabs into place at the edge of Arab East Jerusalem yesterday as the latest sections of a disputed Israeli barrier cut them off from the city.

Work has been stepped up on the barrier in the past three days, separating the suburb of Abu Dis from Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as capital of an independent state and Israelis see as part of their own indivisible capital.

“It used to take me a minute to get to my mother’s house. Now how long is it going to take me to get there?” asked Nadia Ghazali, dabbing her cheeks with a tissue, as she watched the machinery lumber in front of her apartment block.

The barrier of concrete and razor wire is eventually designed to separate Jerusalem, holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians, from the Palestinian areas of the West Bank. Thousands of Palestinians complain that they will now be cut off from jobs, family and places of worship on the other side.

At his besieged headquarters of Ramallah, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat called the barrier the biggest catastrophe to befall the Palestinians since the creation of the Jewish State, but he came up with no new ideas to confront it.

Israelis have brushed off criticism even from their main ally the United States over the looping route of a barrier through the West Bank that they say has already helped to keep more than two dozen bombers from Israeli cities.

Palestinians call the barrier an attempt to annex land occupied since the 1967 Middle East war and fear it will become the de facto border if Israel carries out unilateral partition moves it has threatened if peace talks fail.

“This is the biggest Nakba (catastrophe) of all Nakbas,” Arafat told reporters, using a word which evokes the exodus of Palestinians who fled their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli at Israel’s creation. Palestinians want East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in a move not recognized internationally, as the capital of an independent state. But Israeli leaders have rejected this.

One past suggestion for possible compromise has been that East Jerusalem could be a nominal capital, but that Abu Dis — officially in the West Bank — play the real function. That looked less likely yesterday as the wall cut it off.

“The intention of the construction is to prevent free movement from one side to the other and people will have to go through checks,” a Defense Ministry spokesman said. The barrier is expected to form a makeshift border if Israel carries out unilateral moves that it has threatened if there is no movement on a US-backed road map for ending more than three years of conflict.

The road map has been bogged down by the failure of both sides to take promised steps and end near daily violence.

Stone-throwers confronted Israeli troops yesterday in the West Bank of Tulkarm, where dozens of Palestinians have been rounded up and several detained. Medics said four Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip yesterday.

Contacts to try to set up negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian counterpart Ahmed Qorei, who has a home in Abu Dis, have been frozen since last month. Palestinians said it was because of Israeli attacks. Lower-level officials and delegates from both sides met in Turkey several days ago to discuss ways to push ahead with the road map, but participants said there had been no progress.

Some 2,000 Palestinian supporters of the mainstream Fatah movement demonstrated in Jenin yesterday in a show of support for a local military leader wounded last week by the Israeli Army.

Among the crowd which flooded the streets of the northern West Bank city were 200 gun-toting militants from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed Fatah offshoot whose Jenin leader narrowly survived an assassination attempt.

Zakaria Zubeidi managed to flee after being hit by three bullets fired by members of an undercover Israeli army unit in Jenin refugee camp on Jan. 9. “Al-Aqsa will not give up its struggle against the occupation and will continue its operations against the army and settlers,” some people chanted, in the biggest demonstration for the group in almost two years.

The protesters were carrying pictures of Zubeidi, Arafat and members of the group killed since the start of the intifada, as well as Palestinian flags and the faction’s banner bearing two crossed Kalashnikovs. The Israeli Army has been cracking down on Fatah and its unofficial military branch in their Jenin bastion lately, arresting several senior officials and armed militants.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades was founded shortly after the intifada, or uprising, broke out in September 2000 and has grown to become one of the three major military groups, together with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.