June 18, 2002

Fencing-In the West Bank (Map)

[Bethlehem, Palestine]

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat condemned Israel's building of a security fence along its West Bank border as an 'act of racism' on June 17, 2002, and rejected fierce U.S. criticism of his Palestinian Authority. Arafat lashed out against the planned $220 million fence, which Israel started building on June 16, 2002, after a Palestinian blew himself up on the frontier near an Israeli border patrol. No one else was hurt. (Reuters Graphic)