The fence is working!
Barrier 'has prevented 20 Palestinian attacks'
By Toby Harnden in Jerusalem
News Telegraph
The Israeli security barrier called the "apartheid wall" by protesters has prevented more than 20 Palestinian suicide bomb attacks, the country's domestic intelligence chief said yesterday.
Avi Dichter, the Shin Bet head, said the lack of a successful suicide attack since the bombing of Maxim's restaurant in Haifa on Oct 4 was "an illusory quiet" and unlikely to last.
Work continues on the West Bank fence
He brushed aside international concerns, including those of President George W Bush and Tony Blair, that the barrier, planned to be 370 miles long and with 100 miles already complete, had led to Palestinian humiliation and hardship. "In the West Bank the fence and the peripheral fence around Jerusalem are imperative," he said.
At the Herzliya Conference, a gathering of the Israeli government and security establishment, Mr Dichter said existing sections of the barrier, referred to as "the fence" by most Israelis and "the wall" by its opponents, had saved many lives.
He highlighted a planned attack on a school in the northern Israeli town of Yokne'am this month by two members of Islamic jihad.
Instead of a direct journey of 18 miles, the suspected terrorists were forced to take a circuitous route by taxi, tractor and car, during which they were intercepted.
"If there had been no fence we would be holding this conference after a horrible attack in Yokne'am," he said.
Israeli Arabs living in Israel proper had been involved in 70 per cent of suicide attacks, he added, and could become a "fifth column" for Iran, which was a "strategic threat to Israel" and "the number one terror nation in the world".
Another threat from within was extremist Jews who might seek to remove mosques from holy sites such as the Temple Mount, honoured by Muslims as the place where the prophet Mohammed rose to Heaven and by Jews as the site of their biblical Temple.
"Jewish terrorism could create . . . a significant strategic threat and replace the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians with a conflict between 13 million Jews and one billion Muslims in the world," he said.
telegraph.co.uk |
