Annan calls on Israel to halt settlement, wall construction

The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on Israel to immediately halt all settlement activities and building the isolation wall .

Annan's spokesman Fred Eckhard said on Monday evening that the UN Secretary General considers that there will be no genuine security between the Israelis and the Palestinians, unless two "independent sovereign states are established," as stated in the Roadmap for peace.

Annan's deplored Israel's destruction of buildings in Gaza. Eckhard explained that: the UN secretary general reminds the Israeli authorities that demolishing of houses is a collective punishment and this constitutes a clear violation to the International Humanitarian Law. In September Israel destroyed 200 houses which deprived some 2000 Palestinians from their homes.

Despite all these calls, the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon is persistent to build the isolation wall alleging that constructing it in the West Bank does not constitute a political border nor a security one.

He told a group of European parliamentarians who are visiting Jerusalem that the aim of building the wall is to prevent the Palestinians from entering Israel to carry out what he called terrorist activities.

Sharon, on the other hand, denied any intention or plan to kill the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. He added that Israel does not intend to kill Arafat despite the fact that he is responsible for the killing of hundreds or thousands of people most of them civilians because his strategy is that of terrorism, as Sharon alleged.