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David Horovitz: Facts on the Ground

South of Jerusalem, just before the road toward the Etzion Bloc of settlements disappears into the twin tunnels, bulldozers and earthmovers are clearing a dusty beige gash through a hillside olive grove.

The adjacent neighborhood of Gilo is visible to one side of the work site. The half-finished apartment blocks of Har Homah, to the other, are blocked by the terrain. The ultra-modern barrier that will be erected here is designed to encompass and protect both areas -- serving as the border between southern Jerusalem and the West Bank. As the Defense Ministry Spokeswoman puts it: "The fence that will be placed is a perimeter security fence, basically a wire fence with sensors, with the inclusion of observation systems. You can find a similar type in the border area with Lebanon."

Indeed you can. The difference is that this sophisticated fence, and its complementary sections now being hurriedly erected elsewhere along the 350-kilometer West Bank perimeter, is desperately described by its patrons as everything but a border. "It is not a political line," proclaimed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a recent tour along part of its projected route. Echoed Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, presiding over the formal commencement of construction work, outside Jenin, in June: "It�s a defensive barrier a protective measure an obstacle to thwart suicide bombers."

They protest too much. Sharon long resisted the establishment of such a barrier precisely because he knew it would be viewed as the de facto border. Ben-Eliezer, too, was never an advocate. They shifted because every single suicide bomber to have crossed into Israel these bitter past 21 months did so over the porous West Bank "seam" line. The bombers of Gaza failed to cross into sovereign Israel not for the want of trying, but because Gaza is fenced off (so they had to inflict their damage on troops and settlements within the fence). The vast majority of Israelis told the pollsters they wanted a similar barrier to protect Afulah, Haderah and Haifa from Jenin; Netanyah, Herzliyah and Petah Tikvah from Tul Karm and Qalqilyah. The politicians could not ignore them.

As the barrier -- with its closed-circuit TV cameras, its motion detectors, its attendant observation drones -- stretches out in the weeks and months ahead, it can only make a "martyr�s" death more complicated for the bombers, and thus save Israeli lives. A victory for common sense, then. But also, given the timing and circumstances, a victory for terrorism -- a unilateral step, forced on a reluctant Israeli leadership, as a consequence of relentless Palestinian terrorism.

And when it is completed, Israelis will be physically divided into two camps -- on "our" and "their" side of the fence. The settlers know this best of all. Hence the fury of those consigned to live beyond its embrace and the relief of those within it. Witness the reception of Sharon when he recently visited the settlement of Alfei Menasheh, the shortest of drives into the West Bank, southwest of Qalqilyah. First came a frenzied verbal assault on the prime minister, by residents demanding to be told whether their settlement would fall on "our" side. When unexpectedly unequivocal reassurance to that effect was forthcoming -- when the prime minister made clear that there, as at various other points along its still unfinalized route, the barrier would deviate into the West Bank a few miles from the pre-1967 border -- the smiles returned to the residents� faces, and Sharon was the most welcome of guests.

The distinction will also give pause to any and every Israeli family that might be contemplating building a home at a settlement beyond the barrier. Certainly, there will be few moving out there for the quality of life.

As vehemently as its reluctant fathers tout it as a non-border, its completion will inevitably ignite the debate -- simmering at present -- about the rights and wrongs of defending settlements in those areas that will now be physically barricaded off from Israel proper. Expect the debate to be bitter: With ready access to Israel now denied them, the bombers and gunmen will focus more intensively on settlements, and the cost, in lost lives of Jewish residents and the soldiers defending their presence, may be high. A new generation of soldiers� mothers will doubtless emerge, anguished by the risks posed to their sons, successors to those who spearheaded the successful call for a unilateral pullout from Lebanon.

For 35 years, advocates of settlement in the West Bank sought to create "facts on the ground" that would make a withdrawal to anywhere like the 1967 borders unthinkable and untenable. Never mind what the politicians call it, at $1 million per kilometer, the new fence rising roughly along the West Bank border will come to constitute the most imposing and unarguable of facts on the ground.