TEL AVIV, Nov 10: Israel’s barrier in the West Bank will have severe humanitarian consequences for 680,000 Palestinians, a third of the Palestinian population in the area, a UN report said on Monday.

Based on a map of the route approved by Israel, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Occupied Palestinian Territory found the barrier will cut off some 14.5 percent of Palestinian land from the rest of the West Bank.

The area, between Israel-proper and where the barrier juts into the West Bank, is home to more than 274,000 Palestinians living in 122 villages and towns, the report said.

“More than 400,000 other Palestinians living to the east of the wall will need to cross (the wall) to get to their farms, jobs and services,” the report said. “This means that approximately 680,000...will be directly harmed by the wall.”

The barrier, the report said, “will have severe humanitarian consequences” for some 30 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank.

It found that only 11 percent of barrier will run along the so-called green line separating Israel from territory it captured in the 1967 war.

“For the rest, the wall’s planned route cuts deep into the West Bank — up to 22kms,” the report said.

“Little consideration appears to have been given by the Israeli government to the wall’s impact on Palestinian lives,” the document said. “More people, unable to reach their land to harvest crops, graze animals or to reach work to earn money to buy food, will be hungry.”

The United States has expressed concern at Israel’s plan to loop the wall deep into the West Bank to encompass Jewish settlements and carve out a future border that could render it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state.

So far only about a quarter of the barrier, planned to stretch for some 680kms, has been built at an estimated cost of some 3.4 billion dollars.

The barrier comprises concrete walls, ditches, trenches, roads, razor wire and electric fences. —Reuters