The issue of Israel’s construction of encircling cement walls, fencing, patrol roads, and guard towers around Palestinian population centers, has headed the Palestinian-Israeli agenda for the past two years. Israel views the separation wall as a unilateral step intended to counter bombings against Israeli civilians and domestic insecurity. Israel’s claims, however, that the wall was constructed for security reasons, does not constitute a political border, and serves as a temporary measure until the conclusion of an agreed-upon solution, are all merely pretexts to justify the wall’s construction. In fact, the wall follows the June 4, 1967 borders in some areas, while penetrating deep inside the West Bank (ignoring the 1967 borders) to include Israeli settlement zones and vast open areas-effectively annexing them to Israel. The wall-or the “fence,” as most Israelis prefer to refer to it, avoiding the word “wall’s” negative connotations (in most built-up areas, the structure consists of a six to eight meter high cement wall, while in open areas the structure consists of a fence; there is no substantial difference between the two in security measures, surveillance, and operating patrols)-aims at separating Palestinians from Israelis in the process of expropriating a great deal of land. In Jerusalem and its surroundings, however, the wall separates Palestinians from Palestinians and amputates East Jerusalem from its direct environs, severing the city geographically and functionally from the rest of the West Bank, thereby terminating Jerusalem’s centrality as a metropolitan center for the entire West Bank.