This Week
Barrier To Terror
Israelis increasingly favor fencing off the West Bank.
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
s Palestinians resume the pace and feroci-
ty of their terror onslaught, Israelis
increasingly are demanding that their gov-
ernment build a fence between Israel and
the West Bank that would keep Palestinians out.
Such a barrier is already springing up in some
parts of the country, including around Jerusalem.
Despite the broad appeal of the idea, questions are
being raised as to whether a fence really would solve
Israel's security problems — and whether it would
justify the expected diplomatic fallout if Israel sets a
de facto border with the Palestinians.
The push for a fence is gaining impetus with each
passing day and each new terror attack.
In the latest attacks, on Monday a 17-year-old
bomber linked to Palestinian Authority leader Yasser
Arafat's Fatah movement blew himself up outside a mall
in Petach Tikvah, killing an elderly woman and her
infant granddaughter and injuring more than 40 people.
Israel responded to the attack, as it has to other
recent bombings, with military incursions into
Palestinians cities, arresting suspected terrorists.
On Tuesday, a Palestinian opened fire near a set-
tler school near Nablus, killing three Israeli teen-
agers before being shot to death.
Many Israelis, including reserve soldiers called up
for Operation Defensive Shield and those deployed
along Israel's border with the West Bank, believe
that only a fence can stop the bombers.
Israeli intelligence sources seem to bear this out.
They note that the bombers plan everything in
meticulous detail, except transport from the West
Bank to their targets in Israel proper. That's because
of the ease with which bombers can steal into Israel
and then simply hail a taxi to their chosen attack site.
For example, the Palestinian city of Jenin and its
refugee camp, from which nearly 30 suicide
bombers have come during the Palestinian intifada
(uprising), is just four miles from a virtually
unguarded border. It is just a few miles more from
there to the main highway leading from Tel Aviv
through Hadera, to Israeli Arab areas and to Afula
and Tiberias-.
The heads of Israeli regional councils near Jenin
and other Palestinian cities along the borderline feel
so vulnerable that they are threatening to build a
fence themselves.
"If the government won't do it, we, the regional
council heads, will," says Dani Attar, head of the
Gilboa Regional Council, which represents an area
near Jenin. "We have the legal authority to grant per-
mits for building fences. All we need is the money."
Leslie Sasser is the diplomatic correspondent for the
Jerusalem Report.
5/31
2002
20
Israeli soldiers take over a building while searching
for Palestinian militants Sunday in the West Bank
city of Kalkilya. The action came in response to a
number of Palestinian attacks in recent weeks.
Building a fence similar to those along the
Lebanese and Jordanian borders would cost about
$1.6 million per mile, or about $350 million total,
Attar estimates.
Mixed Results
As for the efficacy of the fence, Attar points out that
the Gaza Strip is fenced, and few if any suicide
bombers have been able to get through from there
— though the topography of the West Bank would
make it much more difficult to enclose than the
Gaza Strip.
The fence Attar envisions would be electrified,
and touching it would set off a sophisticated alarm
system, dispatching patrols to the entry point within
minutes.
His plan is for each regional council to build its
own fence along the border line, fencing off the
entire West Bank roughly along the pre-Six-Day
War border, known as the Green Line.
After initially opposing the fence idea, Defense
Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer now is trying to pre-
empt the regional council heads.
He set up a special "seam-area administration".
charged with erecting a fence and presented a plan
to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon this week.
Critics, however, say Ben-Eliezer intends to build
only 50 miles of fence. That will be virtually useless,
Attar says. The terrorists simply will circumvent the
fenced-off areas and enter via open areas.
To keep Attar and other regional council heads
quiet, Ben-Eliezer has co-opted them as advisers to
his seam-area administration. Some on the panel
suggest building not only a fence but, in particularly
sensitive areas, a high, unscalable wall.
One way or another, the idea is to cut the
Palestinians off from Israel proper, thus putting an
end to Palestinian terror. Or so the theory goes.
Skeptics, however, note several shortcomings. For
one thing,
Palestinians could fire mortars or rockets
b'
over the fence. In addition, it's unclear what message
a fence would send to. the Arab world or the larger
international community.
Israeli officials say the location of a fence would be
determined solely by geographic factors, but many
believe it would constitute a de facto border between
Israel and a future Palestinian state that would .
assume more permanence over time.
Much would depend on where Israel positions the
fence. If it corresponds to the Green Line, the
dilemma arises over whether to protect or dismantle
Jewish settlements on the other side.
If the fence runs inside the West Bank and around
most of the settlements, the international communi-
ty might.well dismiss the new line as an Israeli land
grab and support Palestinian violence against it.
In contrast, many on the right in Israel worry that
such a demarcation would cut Israel off from land
they believe should be .part of Israel. In addition, if
Israel acts unilaterally to erect a fence, some worry
that the Palestinians would react by unilaterally
declaring a state, circumventing the restrictions on
their sovereignty that likely would result frOm an
agreement with Israel.
That would include limits on the size of the
Palestinians' armed-forces, the nature of their
weaponry and the availability of their air space to
Israeli planes in case of threat.
Fix By Default
Given the difficulties, what seems to be happening
in lieu of a clear government decision is a creeping,
ad hoc — and largely ineffective fence- and wall-
building by default along the Green Line.
Some of the fence-building is being done by the
government, some by regional councils and some by
the border villages themselves.
But the security problem masks a deeper issue that
many believe would be resolved by a fence — the
demographic "time bomb."
There now are about9 million people between the
Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, including 5
million Jews and 4 million Arabs. Within the next
decade, there is likely to be an Arab majority.
Unless Israel reaches a political agreement to sepa-
rate from the Palestinians by then, the Palestinians
might well resurrect their old demand for a single, bi-
nationalstate, in which they would be the majority.
Chances for a two-state solution, one predominant-
ly Jewish and the other Palestinian, would evaporate.
The irony is that the Oslo process, which gave
Israel an unprecedented opening to what had been a
monolithically hostile Arab world, could end with
Israel physically closing itself off from the Arab
world behind an electrified fence and a security wall.
After the Six-Day War, the peace treaties with
nd Jordan and the Oslo accords with the
and
Palestinians, many Israelis felt they had broken the
Arab siege and could breathe more freely.
Soon, if pinned between the sea on one side and a
fence against hostile neighbors on the other, they may
feel a deeper sense of claustrophobia than ever. LJ