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May 31, 2002/Sivan 20 5762, Vol. 54, No. 37
Israelis asking: 'Do fences make good neighbors?'
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Israel may soon become a testing ground for the proposition that good fences make good neighbors.
As the Palestinians resume the pace and ferocity of their terror onslaught, Israelis increasingly are demanding that their government 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 in 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 lastest attacks, four Israelis were killed May 28 in the West Bank. three yeshiva students were murdered by a gunman from Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement who infiltrated the settlement of Itamar. An Israeli driver also was shot dead near the settlement of Ofra.
Those killings followed an attack May 27, when a 17-year-old bomber from Arafat's group 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 May 27 attack, as it has to other recent bombings, with military incursions into Palestinian cities, arresting suspected terrorists.
But many Israelis, including reserve soldiers called up for Operation Protective Wall and those deployed along Israel's borderline 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, is just four miles from a virtually unguarded border.
It is just a few more miles 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 currently 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 permits for building fences. All we need is the money."
Building a fence similar to those along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders would cost about $1 million per kilometer, or about $350 million total, Attar estimates.
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 the strip. However, 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 borderline, 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 has set up a special "seam-area administration charged with erecting a fence and presented a plan to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on May 28.
The plan calls for physical barriers, such as fences and trenches, to be augmented by technological components. Construction could begin within two months.
Critics, however, say that 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.
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 over the fence.
In addition, it's unclear what message a fence would send to the Arab world or the larger international community.
If pinned between the sea on one side and a fence against hostile neighbors on the other, Israel may feel a deeper sense of claustrophobia than ever.
Unless, one day, good fences do indeed make good neighbors.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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