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February 13, 2004/Shevat 21 5764, Vol. 56, No. 21
Kalkilya 'fence' is a concrete wall
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
KALKILYA, West Bank - On one side there is no escaping the wall: hulking, concrete and towering almost 28 feet into the sky.
Where it's not a wall, the barrier is a mesh fence topped with barbed wire and cameras, looping around the entire Palestinian city of Kalkilya.
Just across the boundary and only a little over a mile away, in the Israeli city of Kfar Saba, the barrier is welcomed.
But has anyone in Kfar Saba actually seen the barrier? Shrugs, shakes of the head - no.
Kalkilya is surrounded on all sides by what Israel calls the separation fence, a barrier the government says it must build to protect its citizens from suicide bombers, snipers and other Palestinian terrorists.
Residents of Kalkilya say it has turned their city into a ghetto.
But Kfar Saba residents are solidly behind the wall.
"I think we need it. It's for our security," says Dafna Subai, walking down Kfar Saba's main shopping street with her family. "If the worst is that they have to live behind a wall and the worst for us is that we are blown up, then I say let them live behind a wall for now."
The differing views of the security fence are coming to a head as Israel and the Pal-estinians prepare for a Feb. 23 hearing on the barrier's legality at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
The fence is altering the fabric of life that has emerged between Israelis and Pal-estinians over nearly four decades.
According to the Israeli army spokesman's office, five suicide bombers from Kalkilya have carried out attacks in Israel. Among them was the bomber who exploded himself outside Tel Aviv's Dolphinarium disco in June 2001, killing 21 young Israelis.
Last year, a sniper circumvented the wall by crawling through a drainage pipe, shooting at an Israeli car traveling on the nearby Trans-Israel Highway and killing a baby girl.
A portion of the concrete barrier that is now part of the greater fence project was built in late 2001 to protect Israeli vehicles on the Trans-Israel Highway from snipers in Kalkilya.
The decision to build the wall almost 28 feet high was calculated to ensure that buses would not be hit by sniper fire, says Jacob Dallal, an Israeli army spokesman.
The main problem in Kal-kilya is that it is adjacent to the Trans-Israel Highway, "and therefore Israel had no choice but to build a concrete wall, which is very different from most of the rest of the fence," says Dore Gold, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In Kalkilya, the fence looms as a physical and a practical nuisance. Opposition to it is unanimous and locals dismiss Israel's security argument, saying attacks will continue with or without the barrier.
"If a tiger is kept in a closed room, you can imagine how it will act when it is out of its cage. This apartheid wall only shows Israel thinks of us as animals - another reason for Palestinians to resist," says Abdullah Shreem, a Kalkilya farmer who is among those whose land is located on the Israeli side of the fence.
Before the Palestinian intifada broke out in Sept-ember 2000, the residents of Kfar Saba thronged to neighboring Kalkilya on weekends for humus lunches, bargain shopping and cheap automobile repair.
But those days are barely a memory at the Israeli military checkpoint where, until the fence was built, soldiers guarded the only way into and out of the Kalkilya.
Now the checkpoint is dominated by cement blocks topped with sandbags. A nearby watchtower is draped in camouflage netting, and army trucks and jeeps whiz in and out.
In an effort to improve the quality of life in Kalkilya, the Israeli army downgraded its presence at the checkpoint in recent weeks.
Soldiers now visit only sporadically and Palestinians pass the checkpoint freely in carts, trucks and on foot.
With a population of 40,000, Kalkilya serves as a center for surrounding Palestinian towns and villages.
Kalkilya is a Palestinian hub for citrus fruit, boasting vast groves of orange and lemon trees, as Kfar Saba did before its rapid development in recent decades. Kalkilya's fortunes have suffered because of intifada violence, which has limited the transport of produce to Israel and abroad.
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