Madam, - On the same day that David Golding of the Israeli Embassy published a piece in your paper minimising the significance of Israel's "separation wall" (Opinion, November 11th), the UN issued a report on the same structure that paints a very different picture. By this, account, only 11 per cent of the wall's projected route runs along the pre-1967 border known as the Green Line, with the result that 14.5 per cent of the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, will be cut off from the rest of the West Bank.
Mr Golding's claim that the wall can be dismantled at any time is countered by the UN's assertion that "the damage caused by the destruction of land and property for the wall's construction is irreversible". Tens of thousands of Palestinians, trapped between the wall and the Green Line, will be obliged to apply for permits to remain in their own homes, a state of affairs that makes the conventional comparison with apartheid South Africa seem flattering to the latter.
The only questionable claim in the UN report is that "Little consideration appears to have been given by the Israeli government to the wall's impact on Palestinian lives". That impact is the whole point of the wall, which is designed to make life so intolerable for Palestinians already living under an indescribably cruel occupation that they will pack their bags and leave.
The international community must disregard the toxic propaganda emanating from Israeli sources and call for the rapid and total dismantling of this barbarous construction which, like all such walls throughout history, can do nothing but postpone the inevitable achievement of a just and peaceful resolution to a terrible conflict. - Yours, etc.,
RAYMOND DEANE, Chairman, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dame Street, Dublin 2.