The Israeli fence is not going to deliver

by Adam Keller

The main news item in Israel today (June 16) is the fence, the celebrated 
"security fence" which the army is about to start erecting somewhere around 
the site of the Green Line, Israel's pre-'67 border, and which was the 
subject of a stormy debate at this morning's session of the Israeli 
cabinet.

The settlers and their allies on the extreme right are up in arms about it, 
regarding erection of the fence as harbinger of Israeli withdrawal to the 
1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state — their worst 
nightmare.

For the same reason, quite a few people who consider themselves supporters 
of peace and opponents of the occupation are supporting the fence — in 
fact, there had been activists intensively lobbying over the past year for 
such a fence to be erected, and quite a few politicians hope to make 
political capital out of it.

For such people, today is a time of celebration. Looking dispassionately at 
what Defence Minister Ben-Eliezer is actually launching today, with the 
approval of Prime Minister Sharon, both the doves' euphoria and the 
settlers' alarm seem highly premature and misplaced.

For one thing, the fence is not exactly following the line of the pre-'67 
border.

In many places it departs from it by "a few kilometres here and there" — 
changes which are airily taken by politicians and generals who draw lines 
on a map.

But on the ground mean that in dozens of villages barbed wires and 
minefields will suddenly appear to separate Palestinian peasants from their 
ancestral lands, peasants already hard-pressed by the events of the past 
two years and for whom these lands are the last remaining source of 
subsistence.

In the area of Jerusalem, the intended line of the fence has nothing 
whatsoever to do with where the 1967 border was.

Rather, its aim is to entrench the annexation of 1967, with the barbed wire 
separating the 200,000 Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem from their 
brethren in Bethlehem to the south, Ramallah to the north, and a host of 
villages and suburbs all around.

For a Muslim or Christian inhabitant of the West Bank, visiting a Jerusalem 
shrine of one's faith — at present a difficult and risky endeavour, but 
still possible — would become truly impossible, once the fence is complete 
on all sides.

Moreover, erection of a fence does not in itself mean that the army is 
going any time soon to withdraw behind that fence, or even to cease its 
prolonged incursions and invasions into Palestinian cities.

In fact, Sharon had said quite clearly, over and over again, that this is 
NOT going to happen, that the army is not about to withdraw from anywhere, 
nor is any settlement going to be dismantled by the present government.

There is, in fact, an obvious precedent: the Gaza Strip is already for many 
years surrounded on all sides by a fence — which makes it a huge prison 
for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, but it does not prevent Israeli 
settlers from keeping control over a full third of the strip's meager land.

As a result large military forces go on killing and getting killed, day 
after day, in order to maintain these settlements in place.

Last Thursday soldiers guarding the settlement of Netzarim, shot and killed 
a nine-year-old Palestinian child, in an incident which found hardly any 
mention on the Israeli or international press.

This morning, a Yediot Aharonot headline hailed as heroes two 
soldiers killed last night "in defence of Dugit" — Dugit being a place in 
the north Gaza Strip inhabited by disgruntled settlers, who have long since 
given up and asked the government, repeatedly and in vain, to evacuate 
them.

The fate of Gaza seems to be what Sharon has in mind for the West Bank as 
well — with the added complication that in addition to the fence on its 
outside the West Bank is to be divided and sub-divided into smaller and 
smaller enclaves, a process which is already well-advanced.

(In a chance conversation with a contact in Hebron, we today heard of Beit 
Anun villagers bombarded with tear gas when they tried to get to their 
fields and vineyards, and of dedicated teachers transporting matriculation 
exam forms to the cut-off villages, on the backs of donkeys moving through 
steep mountain paths.)

An Israeli population which lives under the constant threat of suicide 
bombings finds little room for empathy with the plight of Palestinians 
under occupation.

With a complete distrust of the other side and the hope for peace at its 
lowest, the concept of "separation" makes the idea of a "Separation Fence" 
popular among broad parts of the Israeli public.

Yet without an end to the occupation, "separation" will not bring about 
security. And with a true end to occupation there will be no need for a 
'Chinese Wall'.

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Gush Shalom (Israeli peace group)