"Israel raises physical barriers against terror"
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"Israel raises physical barriers against terror
Thu May 30, 1:32 PM ET
Andrea Stone USA TODAY
BAT HEFER, Israel -- Benny Yaakoby says the 12-foot-high, 1-mile-long wall between his town and the West Bank city of Tulkarem is protection from Palestinian bullets and suicide bombers.
''This is the optimal solution,'' says Yaakoby, manager of this town of 5,500.
But Samah Salah, a student in the nearby Palestinian town of Qalqilya, calls the concrete, barbed-wire and electronic fence barrier an obstacle to peace and her people's hopes for a Palestinian state. ''Living with fences is like living in prison. The Israelis can't expect if they make us live in a big prison that we will be quiet or peaceful,'' she says. ''It's better to invest in making peace rather than building fences.''
The past 20 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence has created an odd alliance of Israeli hard-liners and peaceniks who say it is time for hafrad, or separation. Israelis no longer argue over whether to build the walls, but over how many degrees of separation from the Palestinians are enough.
After the weekend suicide bombing that killed an elderly woman and her 18-month-old granddaughter at a cafe in Petach Tikvah near Tel Aviv, the government announced Monday that it planned to speed up construction of a separation fence along most of the 260-mile border between Israel and the West Bank.
''Each attack increases the desire to put up walls and fences and obstacles and to let the Palestinians run their own lives, as long as they can't attack us,'' says Gerald Steinberg, a conservative political scientist at Bar-Ilan University.
The fence project was approved in April when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s Security Cabinet agreed to build ''obstacles'' to prevent terrorist infiltration along a buffer zone between Israel and the West Bank. Until this week's new string of attacks inside Israel speeded up construction of patrol roads and electrified fences, officials had planned to start the project in July and complete it in 19 months.
The buffer zone would, in some places, extend up to 5 miles into the West Bank. Dozens of Jewish settlements and parts of northern Jerusalem, a mainly Palestinian area, would be left outside the fence.
Critics of Sharon's plan say it is unworkable because it will still require the military to protect far-flung Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory that have long been magnets for attacks. Their solution: to dismantle isolated settlements and withdraw the military from the territories as part of a separation plan.
Haim Ramon has made separation a top campaign theme in his effort to become leader of the liberal Labor Party, which is in an uneasy coalition with Sharon's hard-line Likud party. Ramon's plan resurrects one suggested two years ago by former prime minister Ehud Barak (news - web sites) in case the Camp David peace talks broke down. It was never implemented when the talks failed and Barak was voted out of power. Under the proposal, 20,000 people in 40 to 50 isolated settlements would be moved into Israel or to settlements closer to Israel. About 80% of the West Bank's 200,000 settlers would be inside the barriers.
Both the Sharon and Ramon plans leave final negotiations on the borders of a future Palestinian state for later, once tempers cool and new Palestinian leaders replace Yasser Arafat (news - web sites).
Defense Ministry Director-General Amos Yaron, who is overseeing the project, dismisses Palestinian complaints that the buffer zone will become a ''fact on the ground.'' Israel has been criticized for moving settlers into Palestinian territory in an effort to extend Israeli borders. ''It is not a political line. The only principle that guides me in drawing the line is security,'' Yaron says. ''It takes a couple of days to change a fence from one place to another place.''
Palestinians see separation as a land grab and a way for Israel to draw final borders without Palestinians' consent. They also say the fences are an extension of travel restrictions in the territories, which Israel instituted in response to the wave of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israelis.
''It's formalized apartheid,'' says Michael Tarazi, a Palestinian legal adviser. Once fences are erected, he says, they will become de facto borders incorporating land occupied by Israel after the 1967 war with Egypt and Jordan -- land the Palestinians want. ''This is about Israeli greed, about getting rid of the Palestinian population as much as possible,'' Tarazi says.
Israelis, fearful of attacks, say they want more space between themselves and the Palestinians. Polls show more than 60% of Israelis support a West Bank barrier similar to the one that surrounds the more compact Gaza. Israeli officials say the 30-mile-long electronic fence separating Israel from Gaza, a strip of land on the Mediterranean, has foiled hundreds of attacks since it was built in 1994.
''People are not safe here,'' says Ran Maimon, a geranium grower. His house in Nitzzni Oz is a third of a mile from the ''Green Line'' that marks the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank. Last summer, a bullet smashed through a window and grazed Maimon's arm. His family no longer goes to nearby Netanya, site of the Passover suicide attack that prompted Israel's recent military offensive in the West Bank. Maimon hopes walls like the one in Bat Hefer will make Netanya and other Israeli cities safe again.
One of seven government-built towns in Israel built near the Green Line when Sharon was housing minister, Bat Hefer came with a 9-foot-high, mile-long concrete wall to shield it from snipers across the valley in Tulkarem. That wasn't high enough or long enough to shield residents from a regular shower of bullets and Molotov cocktails since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
Responding to a plea from local leaders, the army recently raised Bat Hefer's wall to 12 feet and extended it a half-mile.
The government also added a 5,000-volt electronic fence to detect and deter intruders and posted reservists on 24-hour guard duty. Since the improvements, says Yaakoby, Bat Hefer's manager, ''It's been quiet.''
The military is considering an array of defenses ranging from low-tech trenches, water channels and roadblocks to hi-tech infrared sensors, cameras, surveillance balloons and unmanned aerial drones. The buffer zone is expected to cost Israeli taxpayers at least $400 million.
Danny Rothschild of the Council for Peace and Security, a group of former Israeli army officers and intelligence officials that favors separation, says Israel has no choice but to build a line that suicide bombers and gunmen cannot cross.
''We are not listening to the Palestinians anymore. Now we are doing what is good for us and not good for them, unfortunately,'' Rothschild says." |
