An Israeli Ministry of Defence map has also fuelled Palestinian fears that an eastern fence will be built parallel to the western barrier, cutting off Palestinian towns from the fertile Jordan Valley.

The newly released blueprint depicts one extension running east to the River Jordan, while another cuts south for 12 miles west of Jenin, abruptly tailing off without explanation.

Israeli officials said last night that there were “absolutely no plans whatsoever” to extend it “at the moment”, but when pressed last week Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister, said only that “we are planning the route and, when it will be ready, it will be brought before the Government”.

The map depicts the 90-mile stretch of razor wire, ditches and electronic fences that already runs from north of Jenin south to Tulkarem and Qalqilya, the two Palestinian towns that lie at Israel’s narrowest point.

Also portrayed is the serpentine route that it will take around Jewish settlements further south, protecting them from Arab towns, but, Palestinians complain, also cutting off thousands of Arab villagers from their olive trees, citrus groves and neighbouring villages.

When complete, it will stretch 400 miles at a cost of £1 million a mile. The entire project is expected to be finished in two years.

Israel insists that the barrier is needed to stem the flow of more than 100 suicide bombers into Israeli towns, where 900 people have been killed during the three-year Palestinian intifada.

The worst attacks include the attack in Haifa this month, when an Islamic Jihad woman suicide bomber blew herself up in a seafront restaurant, killing 20 people.

Dubbed the “Berlin Wall” by Palestinians, it is hugely controversial, at many points cutting across the pre-1967 “Green Line” regarded by the international community as the likely basis of any future negotiated settlement.

Further anger has been voiced over the plans for Jerusalem, which appear to feature what Palestinians describe as “cantons” around Arab neighbourhoods, including Beit Hanina, Qalandiya and Anata.

Many villages are virtually sealed off from the outside world because the fence loops around their perimeters.

One such is Hable, where Palestinians crouched yesterday beside a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance waiting for Israeli soldiers to open the gate into the village. It is opened only three times a day.Shadia Abdul Rateq, a pregnant 20-year-old sitting on a rusting water pipe, said that it had taken more than two hours for her ambulance to arrive through the Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints to bring her to hospital in Nablus.

“No one can work. No one can do any business. We can’t meet our relatives, we are just in a big jail,” she said.

Last week the United Nations General Assembly passed by 144 votes to four a resolution demanding that Israel halt construction of the barrier, deeming it “in contradiction to international law”.

Rachel Naidak-Ashkenazi, an Israeli Ministry of Defence spokeswoman, said that international anger was misplaced because it misunderstood the “rationale” of the fence.

“It goes to the perception that we are trying to seize lands to dictate where the border is,” she said. “That is not the case, we are talking about a security barrier.”

Last week The Times travelled along the completed section, gaining access to the high-security perimeter road running between the razor wire and fencing to chart its route. Along most of its length it consists of wire and fence, but at Tulkarem and Qalqilya this expands into an eightmetre-high concrete wall with watchtowers designed to stop gunmen shooting at an Israeli motorway.

Palestinians accuse Israel of using the wall as a pretext for a “land grab”, consolidating seizures already made to create the 145 Jewish settlements on West Bank land taken in the 1967 Six-Day War.

They protest that the barrier cuts so deeply into their land and isolates so many towns from each other and from olive fields and water resources that it destroys any chance of establishing a viable, independent Palestinian state by 2005, as laid down in President Bush’s “road map”.

Michael Tarazi, a PLO spokesman, said: “We have been saying all along this fence has nothing to do with security. If it were truly about security, it would have been built on Israel’s 1967 pre-occupation border. Now this map shows a much clearer strategy than we had anticipated, to cage in the Palestinians.”

Barrier briefing

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