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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this morning, toured the Greater Jerusalem area and inspected completion of the separation fence and protective project around Jerusalem. IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, Prime Minister's Office Director-General Ra'anan Dinur, Defense Ministry Director-General Pinchas Buchris, GOC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni, Jerusalem District Police Commander Aharon Franco and other senior officials attended the tour.
The tour included a series of overlooks, beginning at Samuel's Tomb and the Bidu area in northern Jerusalem and ending at the seam between the Gilo neighborhood and Beit Jala in southern Jerusalem. Included in the "Greater Jerusalem" area is 164.5 kilometers of the security fence route from the Kfira stream near the community of Har Adar to Walaje in southern Jerusalem. The fence includes 15 permanent crossings and six temporary ones. Except for a 4.5-kilometer stretch that is still subject to legal discussion, 110 kilometers of barrier have already been completed; a 50-kilometer stretch is under construction.
Prime Minister Olmert received comprehensive briefings on the progress of the work and inspected several types of barriers at various points, crossings and the various solutions that are being implemented in order to allow local populations living close to the fence to maintain their fabric of life. This includes, for example, the road that the state paved between Bidu and Ramallah on which Palestinians may travel without having to enter the territory of Jerusalem close to the fence and undergo checks upon both entry and exit.
At the conclusion of the tour, Prime Minister Olmert said: "I have held more than a few discussions on the issue of the security fence in the Jerusalem area. We have studied the maps and the aerial photographs but this cannot be compared to the impressions one obtains on the ground. The work is impressive in its scope, creativity and technological sophistication. We have invested billions of shekels in the security fence and all that remains is to complete it. The fence in the Greater Jerusalem area must be completed by the end of 2009. This is vital to the security of Israel. Wherever there is a fence, terrorism against Israelis is prevented. Over the years, the security fence has gone from the project that set the international community against us to a project that constitutes an example of how to defend against terrorism. Countries that wish to fight the kind of terrorism that we have absorbed in Jerusalem and other cities throughout Israel, will yet study the model of the security fence."
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