While in the German capital pompous celebrations marking the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany were in full sway, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah Palestinian demonstrators, aided by their Israeli friends, contributed in their way to the Berlin festivities by breaching Israel's concrete Separation Wall. According to Bethlehem-based news agency Maan, some one hundred demonstrators, wearing fluorescent jackets reading “We are going to Jerusalem”, broke through the Qalandiya checkpoint that normally separates Palestinians from Palestinians and prevents them from freely moving in their homeland. With the help of ropes and a truck the demonstrators managed to pull down some of the concrete slabs making up the Separation Wall in that location.
The Separation Wall – a barrier consisting of a network of walls, fences, watchtowers, checkpoints – has been planned to cut for most of its length of about 709 kilometers right into the West Bank, with only 15 percent of it actually following the Green Line of 1967. It is therefore that the International Court of Justice had ruled in 2004 that the section of this barrier, that is not built on the internationally recognized Green Line, is in fact illegal. According to the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, by the end of June this year of the 703 kilometers some 413 have been completed.
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