The Security Fence, the Anti-Terrorism Barrier, the Wall

The troubles of the Holy Land have taken a toll on both sides. While one man’s terrorist may be another man’s freedom fighter, the fact is that in recent decades, both sides have suffered terribly: Palestinians have killed Israeli Jews, and Israelis have killed Palestinians.

Since 2003, Israel has been building a wall around the West Bank in the name of security from terrorism. While Israel calls this the “Security Fence,” most Palestinians think of as a degrading and illegal land grab. Israelis would say that it’s been effective — noting that in the three years before it was built, suicide bombers killed 293 of their citizens; in the three years after it went up, that number dropped to 64. Since its construction, terrorist attacks have dwindled. Palestinians would counter by saying that this decline is not because of the wall, but because Palestine, its president, its security forces, and its people have all realized that violence is a losing strategy. Palestinians assure me that if anyone really wants to get through the wall (which is far from finished), it’s very easy to do.

It’s hard to argue against the land grab case. If the fence or wall was simply for security, as claimed, it would have been built along the internationally recognized border that was defined by the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993. But it’s generally well to the Palestine side of that border. In fact, it’s nearly twice as long as the border it claims to defend — gerrymandered in order to protect settlements, aquifers, good farmland, and holy places within the West Bank for Israel.

Walls are ugly. They may be necessary, but they represent a diplomatic failure. While it can look almost pretty from the Israeli side, the wall is unfinished and depressing from the Palestinian side.
Walls are ugly. They may be necessary, but they represent a diplomatic failure. While it can look almost pretty from the Israeli side, the wall is unfinished and depressing from the Palestinian side.
Restrictions and regulations necessary in the days of suicide bombers and violent resistant survive. For example, it’s much cheaper to get your car repaired in Palestine than in Israel because the standard of living and wage scale are so different. (The Israeli per capita GDP of about $33,000 is more than ten times that of Palestine’s.) But, of course, this could be a devious way for a bomb to be planted and imported into Israel unknowingly by the Israeli owner of that vehicle. So it’s forbidden.
Restrictions and regulations necessary in the days of suicide bombers and violent resistant survive. For example, it’s much cheaper to get your car repaired in Palestine than in Israel because the standard of living and wage scale are so different. (The Israeli per capita GDP of about $33,000 is more than ten times that of Palestine’s.) But, of course, this could be a devious way for a bomb to be planted and imported into Israel unknowingly by the Israeli owner of that vehicle. So it’s forbidden.
This map is a popular poster you see around Palestine and in pro-Palestinian publications. It illustrates quite graphically how Israeli control of the region is growing. Israelis remind us that Arafat turned down a chance to have a solid two-state option, and that the Second Intifada made the aggressive Israeli approach unavoidable. There is an internationally recognized border with a solid and viable West Bank, but Israel has created a system of designated areas that gives complete control only to "Area A" (18 percent of the land in the West Bank, with about 55 percent of the people), while Israel controls the rest (Areas B and C, used for settlements, natural resources, and the major roads enabling Israel to, when necessary, lock down the country and isolate the cities of Area A). The last map (far right) shows why Palestinians compare their control of the West Bank today to Swiss cheese ("Israel gets the cheese, and Palestine the holes").
This map is a popular poster you see around Palestine and in pro-Palestinian publications. It illustrates quite graphically how Israeli control of the region is growing. Israelis remind us that Arafat turned down a chance to have a solid two-state option, and that the Second Intifada made the aggressive Israeli approach unavoidable. There is an internationally recognized border with a solid and viable West Bank, but Israel has created a system of designated areas that gives complete control only to “Area A” (18 percent of the land in the West Bank, with about 55 percent of the people), while Israel controls the rest (Areas B and C, used for settlements, natural resources, and the major roads enabling Israel to, when necessary, lock down the country and isolate the cities of Area A). The last map (far right) shows why Palestinians compare their control of the West Bank today to Swiss cheese (“Israel gets the cheese, and Palestine the holes”).

I’ll continue this Holy Land series until November 21st. Then, to celebrate my homecoming, I’ll give a live, free slideshow lecture on Thursday, November 21st at 7 p.m. P.S.T. in Edmonds, Washington. You can attend in person (registration required)…or watch the live webcast from anywhere in the world (no registration required). Learn more at Rick Steves – Holy Land: Israel and Palestine Today.

Comments

20 Replies to “The Security Fence, the Anti-Terrorism Barrier, the Wall”

  1. Typically, international boarders are determined by war. Hungary lost 2/3 of what it considers its land. England lost land to France. The US – Mexico boarder was established by war. I am not saying it is fair or right. Perhaps the US SW should be returned to Mexico. There were people movements in Europe after their wars. Greece sent their Muslims to Turkey and Turkey sent their Christians to Greece. The Muslims sent their Jews to Israel …. Should Israel send its Arabs to Arabia? ( I am not saying they should).
    It should be noted that each change in Israel-Arab boarders was the result of a war which the Arabs started to exterminate “The Zionist Entity.”

  2. Rick — Your desire to be thoroughly neutral is commendable, but perhaps you should go back farther than 2003 for your facts. Maybe all the way back to the situation immediately following WW I, when the Balfour declaration was issued and the British undertook to try to govern what was then called the Palestine Mandate. I know that would take a lot more time and study than you appear to have given to your analysis based upon a short visit. I think that you would have no difficulty concluding that any argument based upon moral equivalence. The Jews and the Israelis have conceded more than 80% of the land that was designated as the Palestine Mandate to the Arabs, and the Arabs insisted that that land be entirely Jew-free–something that the Jews never required on the land that they were allowed to keep. When the Israelis got kind of tired of continuous terrorist acts by the Arabs, such as bombing restaurants and blowing up buses, they decided to do something to make it more difficult for terrorists to enter, kill Israelis, and become martyrs and dead celebrities back home. That entailed building barriers and creating checkpoints. It may not be pretty, but it has worked. Please note that, contrary to the policies of the Palestinian Arabs toward Israel and toward the Jews, the Israelis do not have an openly published and constantly pursued objective of killing all Arabs and destroying their cities and denying their right to exist.

  3. Rick — Your desire to be thoroughly neutral is commendable, but perhaps you should go back farther than 2003 for your facts. Maybe all the way back to the situation immediately following WW I, when the Balfour declaration was issued and the British undertook to try to govern what was then called the Palestine Mandate. I know that would take a lot more time and study than you appear to have given to your analysis based upon a short visit. I think that you would have no difficulty concluding that any argument based upon moral equivalence is flawed. The Jews and the Israelis have conceded more than 80% of the land that was designated as the Palestine Mandate to the Arabs, and the Arabs insisted that that land be entirely Jew-free–something that the Jews never required about Arabs on the land that they were allowed to keep. When the Israelis got kind of tired of continuous terrorist acts by the Arabs, such as bombing restaurants and blowing up buses, they decided to do something to make it more difficult for terrorists to enter, kill Israelis, and become martyrs and dead celebrities back home. That entailed building barriers and creating checkpoints. It may not be pretty, but it has worked. Please note that, contrary to the policies of the Palestinian Arabs toward Israel and toward the Jews, the Israelis do not have an openly published and constantly pursued objective of killing all Arabs and destroying their cities and denying their right to exist.

  4. Please note that all comments so far are from Israel’s point of view. Lets hear/read comments from the Arabs perspective.

  5. In response to DB Steinberg, (1) after WWI Jews owned 2.5% of the land; (2) the Arabs did not insist the land be “Jew-free”; villages had long existed where Jews and Arabs lived as peaceful neighbors; (3) the wall itself encloses some 250,000 Palestinians on the Israeli side of the “security wall” — hardly then barriers to keep out Palestinian “terrorists”; (4) to get a sense of Israeli policy toward the Arab population, google “Breaking the Silence,” testimonies of Israeli soldiers vis a vis Palestinians; (5) since Israel has no defined borders, when one speaks of “Israel’s right to exist,” what territory is one speaking of? And in response to M.Craig’s comments about wars determining borders, Israel has signed on at the UN as well as the Geneva Convention, and therefore obligates itself to international law which speaks of certain responsibilities of an occupier to the occupied, including not transferring the occupier’s citizens in to the occupied territories (as in settlements).

  6. Right on, Rick! You have been investigating the situation without preconceptions. I am eager to see the video that you are creating.

  7. Rick,
    What would you have Israel do? Give each Palistinian $33,000, clean up their side of the wall, tear down the wall, move the wall to the border so terrorists can fire rockets from 30 feet instead of from 30 miles away, make Palistine as pretty as Israel? “Walls may be necessary but they represent a diplomatic failure.” OK, what is your point? The walls serve a purpose – THEY SAVE LIVES. But you say “the Palestinians now understand that violence is not the answer” so the wall should come down since there were only 64 killed in suicide bombings since the wall went up. Sure that makes perfect sense to me and I’m sure Israel is comforted by the fact that Palestinians have given you assurances they’ll be good and never break their promises ever again.

  8. In response to Arnie, Much has been written about the situation, and I think disagreements are often based on definitions. Ownership of land is not simple. That is why we have title searches when we sell property. (This has been a problem in Turkey too). Does living on land mean you own it? If you own a house in another city and some bums move in, can you come, after some period of time and kick them out? If you sell the house can the new “owners” kick the bums out? American settlers bought land from the natives. The natives probably thought they got a good deal. They considered buying land like buying air, both ridiculous.
    Jews had an aggressive land buying program before 1948. What happens to a family that has lived on land owned by an absent landlord, for generations? Like the native Americans, I don’t doubt that some Arabs believe their land to have been stolen. So Jews might have owned 2.5% of the land, but how much did the Arabs living there own? We don’t know. What we do know is that most of the land was uncultivated, and the population density was low. This is a fight between ranchers and farmers as in the musical, “Oklahoma.”
    The UN rules about moving into occupied land was written against the Nazi program of exterminating people in land conquered and then moving Germans into that land. Israel gained control of the land in a defensive war. They have not expelled the Arabs (as the Arabs do to the Jews). They have not forced Jews to live there (it is true that they have given them incentives to move there).
    What does occupied land mean? Israel might claim they have a deed to the land (Bible). Is Tel Aviv on occupied land? That has been the Arab contention. Is Spain occupied Muslim land? Is California, New Mexico, etc occupied land? Considering the name, should Indiana be returned to the people from whom it was taken?
    What is the legal right for the UN to partition the Mandate of Palestine? Do we abide by UN rules? There have been more rulings against Israel than any other country including Syria, or China. Based on the amount of anti-Israel rulings compared to really bad actors, does the UN have the right to judge Israel or the US?
    These are questions without good answers. As I wrote, historically they have beendetermined by war.
    A sleeping Israeli was killed in a bus last week.

  9. i have not recently been a big fan of Tom Friedman’s writings (he is too uncritically enthusiastic about globalisation), but his column today on the Israeli-Palestinian situation seems to be an even-handed view – and he is Jewish. This site won’t let me post a link (why???), but the column is on the op-ed page/site for Nov 17, and is about a book I intend to read called “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel” by Ari Shavit. Recommended.

  10. In 1948 Zionist forces depopulated over 500 Palestinian villages. That Palestinian land was owned by the Palestinians. That is they expelled the Arabs and created a refugee population. It was not a defensive war, but an offensive one. One can still go today and see the ruins. Zochrot, a Jewish group, is marking the destroyed Arab villages as a reminder to their own people what their forefathers did. Yes, ownership of land is simple.

  11. If the Arabs were expelled, why are there over a million Arabs (20% of population in Israel today?
    If Jews were not expelled from their neighbors, why are there (essentially) no Jews in those Arab lands?
    If the Arabs in Israel are treated so poorly, why don’t they move out?

  12. Rick is the only one I trust to give the world the truth.

    Sincerely,

    His Doppelganger
    Tampa
    Florida

  13. In response to M. Craig: The Zionists destroyed over 500 Palestinian villages, creating over 750,000 refugees; but at the same time many Arabs refused to flee: read Archbishop Elias Chacour’s book, Blood Brothers: his family was driven from their home, yet remained nearby, even going back to work for the Jews who took over the village because they did not know how to care for the olive trees and land. There are Jewish communities even today in many Arab lands. “If Arabs in Israel are treated so poorly, why don’t they move out?” you ask. In the US, Afro-Americans were treated very badly, but they stayed and fought for the human and civil rights that any fair democracy will give to all its citizens.

  14. Blacks realistically had no place to go. Arabs in Israel (but not Jews) are free to move to the west bank. Today Jerusalem Arabs are getting applying for Israeli passports. They want to make sure that they stay on the Israeli side if the land is transffered to the PA.
    It is best to talk of specifics. The Palestinians tell of a article by Shavit who wrote of how the Palestinians in Lydda were expelled on July 13th in the 1948 war. This is true. But lets put this in context. During the war where the UN partition was accepted by the Jews but not the Arabs, the Jewish battalion, fighting to prevent their extinction, were successful and the town leadership surrendered and agreed to live under Jewish soverigenty. Most of the troops left, leaving a small guard. When 2 Arab Legion armored cars arrived, they reneged. They did not let the Israeli soldiers leave, but killed them.
    The Israelis returned having now only 500 men to recaptured the city, fighting house to house to root out snipers. There was loss of life on both sides. This city (Lod today) was in the neck of the country. If they could not control that area, Israel would have been divided in half. Rather than have a 5th column they expelled the population rather than kill them.

  15. The UN partition plan was rejected by the Arabs, who were 65% of the population while the Jews were 35%, because it was unfair. The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, gives the following definition of ethnic cleansing: “…ethnic cleansing is an effort to render an ethnically mixed country homogenous by expelling a particular group of people and turning them into refugees while demolishing the homes they were driven out from” (pg. 3). In 1938 David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency, “I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it.” What followed in 1948 was Plan Dalet which spelled out clearly how Palestinians would be driven out. When it created its nation-state, the Zionist movement did not wage a war that “’tragically but inevitably’ let to expulsion of the Palestinians, but the main goal was this ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” (Pappe). Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour describes the process in his book, “Blood Brothers.”

    In 1948 and following, over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed and 750,000 refugees created. And the policies continue. Since 1967 zero Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians, but 27,000 Palestinians homes have been demolished by Israel. 800,000 Palestinian olive trees, a source of Palestinian income and employment, have been uprooted. Currently there are 260 Jewish only settlements and ‘outposts’ on confiscated Palestinian land. In June of this year, the Israeli Knesset approved the Prawer-Begin Bill which when implemented will result in the destruction of 35 “unrecognized” Arab Bedouin villages, forcing displacement of up to 70,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel and dispossession of their historical lands in the Negev. Then read the October 21 issue of the New Yorker which details the massacre and expulsion of 35,000 residents of Lydda: “Lydda is the black box of Zionism. The truth is that Zionism could not bear the Arab city of Lydda. From the very beginning, there was a substantial contradiction between Zionism and Lydda. If Zionism was to exist, Lydda could not exist. If Lydda was to exist, Zionism could not exist.” While the present “peace talks” are going on, the Israeli government has authorized another 5000 settler housing units in Palestinian territory. If this isn’t ethnic cleansing, then what is?

    Many Israelis understand the immorality of what their government is doing. Breaking the Silence are soldiers who have gotten out because of the evil they are forced to inflict upon Palestinians. Machsom Watch is a group of Jewish grandmothers who stand at checkpoints to monitor how their soldier grandchildren treat Palestinians. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions rebuilds Palestinian homes destroyed by the Israeli military. Bt’Selem is an Israeli group monitoring human rights in the Occupied Territories. Mark Braverman, Avraham Burg, and Jewish Voice for Peace are among Jewish moral voices who recognize the evil of the occupation. And as one Israeli in Jerusalem, Reuven Kaminer, told me, “The occupation is rotting the soul of my people.”

  16. It was the Palestinians who attempted to perform ethnic cleansing, and still want to. That is what you call it when one side denies the others the right to exist. The 1947 borders were unfair, to Israel. In some places their borders were only seven miles apart. The Palestinians could have had a homeland back in the 1940s. In 1947 Azzami Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League told Abba Eban that he couldn’t negotiate. He said that if he agreed to a partition he would “be a dead man within hours of returning to Cairo.” He later announced on the radio: “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre.” Many wealthy Arabs left Palestine temporarily, expecting to return in triumph. The Jews plead with poor Arabs to remain in Haifa. After the Arabs lost, they could have resettled their refugees; Israeli took in the same number of Jewish refugees. The Arabs prefer to use the refugees as a human land claim against Israel.

    The Arabs controlled the West Bank and Gaza for almost two decades after Israel’s founding. They never set up a Palestinian state. In spring 1967, the Arabs threw UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai Peninsula. They blockaded Israel’s access to the Red Sea, an act of war. Cairo radio announced: “This is our chance, Arabs, to deal Israel a mortal blow of annihilation.” Nasser said: “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.” President Aref of Iraq said: Our goal is clear: to wipe Israel off the map. The head of the PLO, Ahmed Shukairy said: “The Jews of Palestine will have to leave … Any of the old Jewish Palestine population who survive may stay, but it is my impression that none of them will survive.”

    The Palestinians don’t just want ethnic cleansing, they want genocide.

    (Saved screen capture.)

  17. The UN partition plan was rejected in 1947 because the Arabs, who were 65% of the population would get only 40% of the land. It was deemed unfair. The land is very small, and so borders 7 miles wide are part of reality. As to Arabs denying the “right of Israel to exist,” the question is, which Israel? Israel has never defined constitutionally her borders, so it is impossible to respond to what Israel is talking about. The Likkud Party platform says there shall be only Israel between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River: Israel says Palestine should not exist; Israel denies the Palestinians’ right to exist there. Twenty Arab Nations said they would sit down with the Israelis and Palestinians and work out a peace plan for the entire region. Israel has refused to do so. Rabin was assassinated by one of his own. People on both sides say many things: what we have to look at is what is happening today, and Israel continues to enforce a brutal occupation that is illegal under charters that she has signed.

  18. Moslems controlled the Middle East for centuries without setting up a Palestinian state. Arabs rejected the partition because it allowed for Israel’s existence. It is the Palestinians who threaten to kill any one who compromises. Look at Sadat. “President” Abbas is afraid to even set foot in Gaza. In 2001, after renouncing terrorism, the Palestinians were offered over 90 percent of the West Bank, much of Jerusalem, and all of Gaza. The Israelis got suicide bombers, often children trained to hate Jews. As long as the Palestinians refuse to make peace, the occupation is legal and justified.

  19. Whatever the Israelis offered Palestinians is like a warden offering prisoners in a penitentiary an open courtyard in which to exercise. It is still a prison.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his government’s intention to construct another “separation barrier” – a large fortified wall or fence referred to by Palestinians as an apartheid wall – “between the West Bank and Jordan after completing walls on the Egyptian and Syrian borders.” Netanyahu is doing this for a variety of reasons, such as to keep Arab and other non-Jewish refugees from coming into Israel and, in the case of the West bank – Jordan wall, to symbolize Israel’s ongoing control of the area.

    The original Zionist rationale for the state of Israel was that it would serve as a place of safety for the world’s Jews as anti-Semitism played out its allegedly inevitable horrid destiny. Well, the problem today is that the policies of Israel are the major motivators of worldwide anti-Semitism, and because of these same policies, there is no place in the world more potentially dangerous for Jews than Israel. Thus the Israeli fondness for walls. It may very well be that when all of this wall construction is finished, Israel will look like the world’s largest ghetto.

    Within their walls, Israel’s leaders are busy making their ghetto religiously pure. Just this week buildings occupied by 15,000 East Jerusalem Arabs were scheduled for demolition. Those serving the notices to the 200 residential blocs had to be “escorted by Israeli soldiers.” Thus, while the walls discourage the non-Jews outside from breaking in, the home demolitions (along with a host of other nasty policies) encourage the inside non-Jews to get out.

    It makes not a bit of difference that all this wall building, to say nothing of the accompanying ethnic cleansing, is illegal. The Israelis don’t care. They make their own “law” based on their military capacity to enforce their will, and their perverted psychology – the belief that their past suffering (at least that of the Jews of Europe) somehow justifies imposing suffering on others.

Comments are closed.