Standing in front of the red five-star emblem of the People’s Republic and flanked by bouquets of plastic flowers yesterday, hundreds of Chinese couples took advantage of a new law, introduced on the 54th anniversary of Communist rule, to get married. The city of Qalqilya is completely surrounded by huge concrete walls to protect the new Trans-Israel Highway from shootings.And that has all been from walls and fences which have only crossed up to a mile or so into the West Bank The new fence approved yesterday will cut far deeper.. Palestinian farmers isolated from their fields have been forced to move their families to sleep in tents on their land so as not to lose their crops. Palestinian schoolchildren have to queue for hours at Israeli checkpoints to be allowed to cross the wall to school, or to cross back to get home.

Entire villages have been cut off from the rest of the West Bank. He said simply that US views on the fence, which President Bush has described as a “problem”, had not changed.The original aim of the settlements now being included on the “Israeli” side of the wall, which are built on occupied land in contravention of international law, was to stake a claim to the West Bank as Israeli land.The effects on Palestinians from the sections of wall built so far have been disastrous. An increasing number of observers are now saying that the fences and walls look like an attempt to pre-empt any peace deal.However the US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, declined publicly to criticise the latest decision. President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told the Israeli Cabinet that it looked like an attempt to establish a new de facto border. The stretches that have been built so far have repeatedly strayed by as much as a mile into the West Bank. The new fences around Ariel and Kedumim will cut much deeper.

That, say the Palestinians, is because the aim of the wall is to take as much West Bank land for Israel as possible.And it’s not just the Palestinians who fear this may be the case. The opposition to Mr Sharon’s proposal, which was eventually approved, came from ministers such as Nathan Sharansky who insisted Israel should not bow to US pressure but join the Ariel and Kedumim fences to the main barrier.The barrier’s opponents say a fence whose sole aim was to keep out suicide bombers could run along the Green Line and avoid all the controversy. But he has been a driving force behind the new route which cuts deep into the West Bank.The debate at the Israeli cabinet meeting was not over whether to build the fence. Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, was originally against the barrier, and was dragged into it by the public mood. And no suicide bomber has managed to breach any of the stretches that have been built so far ­ either a combination of two 15-metre-high metal fences, one equipped with electronic sensors, and deep trenches, or towering concrete walls.Israeli public opinion, ground down by the constant spectre of suicide bombing, is solidly behind the “security fence”. Israel insists that is not the purpose of its “security fence”. But the Americans are threatening to deduct from $9bn of loan guarantees it has given Israel the cost of sections that stray too far from the internationally recognised Green Line dividing Israel from the West Bank .In an effort to allay American fears, the Israeli Cabinet decided not to join the new stretches of fence east of Ariel and Kedumim to the main fence for the time being, but to leave a gap pending further discussions with the US.The Israeli government says the fence can still be moved as part of a peace deal, and that it is only being built to stop suicide bombers crossing into Israel.