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Hirsh Goodman: A Harmful Illusion

If you want to witness madness, take yourself on a tour of the security fence now being built around Jerusalem. The madness is not in the fence itself, though there are parts of it that only the Mad Hatter could have thought of. It�s in the fact that those great liberals, the leaders of the Labor Party, drunk with the success of the Six-Day War, extended Jerusalem's city limits to include areas where 250,000 Palestinians now live as residents of the eternal, united and indivisible capital of the Jewish people. So the fence is of virtually no help at all. If anything it will only exacerbate the problem.

The fence itself is reminiscent of the Israel-Lebanon border, with electronic sensors, a patrol road, a supplementary sand road on which footprints can be spotted, barbed wire and other components not visible to the naked eye. It essentially turns the united capital of the Jewish people forever into another Belfast or Berlin -- or Chelm.

As planned, it will also bring tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians into Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and, at the same time, leave 20-25,000 Palestinian residents of united Jerusalem on the other side of the fence. It separates farmers from their fields, divides families and towns, and makes it impossible for children to go to their old schools or for people to reach their places of employment. It cuts a deep and horrible scar in the beautiful rolling Biblical landscape surrounding the city and is testament to the senselessness of attempting to resolve a problem by physical means.

Take the case of Abu Dis and neighboring Al-Azariyah to Jerusalem�s east, two large towns, partly lying within Jerusalem�s current city limits as set in 1967. The result is that until now, half their residents have blue Israeli identity cards and yellow Israeli number plates on their cars, affording them total freedom of access in the capital, while the other half are West Bank residents with no privileges whatsoever. At present a two-meter-high wall made up of individual concrete blocks divides the towns in two, which means that for a West Bank resident of Abu Dis to visit a Jerusalem resident of the same town living just a block away means a 20-mile drive and traversing three road blocks, one or all of which are likely to be closed on any given day.

Except that the two-meter-high barrier is a joke. Grandmothers and children cross it with equal alacrity, either by squeezing through the cracks between the blocks or over mounds of earth that have been piled high at either side of the barrier making it very easy to negotiate. In consequence, as part of Jerusalem�s "security envelope," the two-meter wall will become an eight-meter wall --

impossible to scale and perhaps providing Israelis in Jerusalem with some more security, but unable to contain the rage among the Palestinians who are being cut off from their neighbors, schools, clinics, services, fields and daily lives.

Three suicide belts were found in a butcher shop in Al-Azariyah on the day after the Hillel Caf� bombing, September 9, waiting to be picked up by three more suicide bombers. Luckily for all they were intercepted on their way. The reason they were intercepted was because the security forces had good intelligence, not because of some physical barrier that only creates more resentment and hatred. The billions of shekels being spent on an illusory barrier to terror that leaves tens of thousands more Palestinians on this side of the security fence would best be spent elsewhere, preferably half on effective security measures and half on bringing a better quality of life to those Palestinians who are counted as residents of the capital but whose municipal services until now have been atrocious.

There are a lot of serious arguments for and against the security fence in general. If it helps save lives it is certainly worth it. But where that fence is placed is what is critical. In Jerusalem, having the fence follow dots on the map demarcating Jerusalem�s extended boundaries, while being insensitive to realities on the ground, will only serve to add new layers of frustration and rage to a people so angry that it is no longer only fanatics who blow themselves up. And if anyone can explain the security rationale of adding tens of thousands more Palestinians to Jerusalem's popu-lation, I'll eat my hat. That's a promise.

The fence around Jerusalem is an allegory for the larger fence going up between us and the Palestinians. It gives the illusion of security while exacerbating the problem. It postpones seeking a solution and deepens resentment and hatred on both sides. Ulti-mately it is a monument to failed leadership to bring about the only practical solution at present: two states for two peoples along the 1967 border with minor adjustments and an honorable solution to the refugee problem, short of the right of return.