Palestinians doubt own state while Netanyahu rules

BEIT IKSA, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinians living on the bizarre and fragmented border Israel has cut through the West Bank were pessimistic on Wednesday about any deal with Israel's new government to give them a viable state.

Their daily reality is one of concrete tunnels, barricaded flyovers, underpasses, checkpoints and a formidable barrier that snakes deep around several Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, forcing lengthy detours for Palestinian residents.

"If ever we had some hope they would remove this wall, that hope has evaporated with this new government," said Omar Hamdan, head of the municipal council of Beit Iksa, which lies almost entirely cut off in a noose of land on the complex border line.

His community is one of 15 Palestinian villages stuck in a maze of Israeli-made loops on the map around Jerusalem, where the "security barrier" of the Jewish state cuts into land east of the 1948 Green Line that was once Israel's western border.

Israel's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was sworn in on Tuesday, refuses to endorse internationally backed agreements calling for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

On Wednesday, his far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was quick to wash Israel's hands of past commitments to the U.S.-sponsored Annapolis understandings of 2007, saying the call for a two-state solution had "no validity."

Lieberman's statement drew swift criticism from the Palestinian Authority.

"This is a challenge to the international community and to the United States that adopted the two-state solution," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The United States should take a clear position "before things get worse," he said.

Palestinians say there is now even less likelihood of Israel dismantling settlements, which the United Nations considers an obstacle to peace. And while Israel says its barrier is temporary, they believe is it being built to last a long time.

GATED COMMUNITY

Once the barrier in this area is complete, the 2,000 people of Beit Iksa will have to pass through an Israeli-controlled gate to reach the rest of the West Bank from the island that is left of their village, on a slope facing Jerusalem.

"When they complete the wall it will be like a big prison," said Hamdan, displaying an Israeli military map showing that the whole village will be encircled by the barrier, with one gate.

Israel says the network of razor wire fences and high cement slabs is meant to keep suicide bombers out. The Palestinians say it is a blatant land grab, meant to deny them a viable and contiguous state. The World Court deemed the project illegal.

In nearby villages, some 50,000 people who have spent their lives looking to Jerusalem as their nearest city center must now travel to the less familiar West Bank administrative center of Ramallah, over circuitious routes through the steep hills.

"They have made our life much harder with these measures. My son went to Mecca twice and it was easier than going to Jerusalem," said 72-year-old villager Abdel-Majid Habbaneh.

"How can we have a state where its land is being eaten up by settlements and the wall?" Habbaneh asked

The mayor said Beit Iksa had lost some 3,500 acres of farmland to the planned route of the barrier and to nearby Jewish settlements. The village looks east over a valley to the rooftops of Ramot, a settlement built in the 1980s.

North of the village on Wednesday, work on the barrier and the patrol road behind it was continuing. A senior officer was surveying the scene from a height, and security guards told reporters to leave.

"It's impossible to have a state," said Hamdan. "I wonder what kind of state you can have on separate chunks of land?"

(Editing by Douglas Hamilton)