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Israel: Rethinking the Fence
Leslie Susser
For about 123 kilometers (77 miles), the only completed stage of the West Bank security fence winds south from the Israeli Arab village of Salem, near the northernmost tip of the West Bank, to Elkanah, a settlement about 6 kilometers (4 miles) across the Green Line, east of Tel Aviv. Here it comes to an abrupt stop.
On August 12, less than two weeks after Defense Ministry officials marked its completion in a low-key ceremony, a Palestinian suicide bomber skirted the Elkanah end-point, walked the five kilometers to the Israeli town of Rosh Ha�ayin, and blew himself up at checkout number three of a small supermarket, shattering the computerized cash register and killing local resident Yehezkel Yekutieli, 42, who had come in for some bread and milk. About 40 minutes later a second suicide terrorist attacked at a bus stop outside the settlement city of Ariel, about 15 kms east of Elkanah, killing 18 year-old Erez Hershkovitz. The fence does not reach Ariel either.
The
bombings might seem to highlight the need to erect the rest of the fence as quickly as possible. But it�s not that simple.
For one thing, the American administration -- alerted by Palestinian leaders who oppose both a "land-grab" on the route and the very idea of a fence -- has warned that it is firmly opposed to any part of the barrier cutting into West Bank territory. One U.S. official told The Report that, should the Administration conclude that the fence is not strictly a security barrier -- but rather an attempt to create facts on the ground and influence future border negotiations -- it could deduct a dollar from the $9 billion in promised loan guarantees for every dollar Israel spends on the construction. Yet if the American pressure works, and the fence does not ultimately go around Ariel and/or deep into the West Bank to encompass other settlements, Israeli right-wingers threaten they�ll come out against the project as a whole.
Another problem hampering accelerated building: Some Palestinian villages have been split in two, and farmers cut off from their lands, by the construction so far. More of this, and especially the projected severing of the Arabs in Jerusalem from the Palestinian hinterland, could provoke much more controversy.
Perhaps most disconcerting, at least for the 90 percent of Israelis who support the fence, is that many pro-fence lobbyists are convinced that Prime Minister Sharon has no intention of completing the project in any case. He never wanted to build it, they note, because he is ideologically and politically opposed to constructing anything resembling a border near the Green Line. And he deliberately invited American criticism, they charge, by leaking plans to take it around Ariel -- carving a huge swath of about 300 sq. kilometers (120 sq. miles) out of the West Bank. He knew full well the administration would find this intolerable, says Ilan Tsion, director of the Public Council for a Security Fence, and that the project would be long delayed, "and so he drew American pressure, intending to use it as an excuse not to build." Sharon�s aides, unsurprisingly, flatly deny this.
At their July 29 White House talks, President Bush urged the prime minister to look at the "big picture," and not do anything that might compromise the "vision" of two states -- Israel and a viable Palestine -- living side by side in peace. Ten days later, on holiday at Kennebunkport, Bush put his objection to the fence in a nutshell: "It kind of meanders around the West Bank, which makes it awfully hard to develop a contiguous Palestinian state over time."
A senior American official told The Report that the president is not against the fence per se, and that he recognizes Israel�s right to do whatever it takes to defend its citizens. "If the fence were to follow the Green Line exactly and not encroach on any West Bank territory, the U.S. would have no problem with it," he explains. "The less it encroaches, the smaller the problem; no encroachment means no problem."
About a week after his return from Washington, with Bush�s caveats still ringing in his ears, Sharon convened defense chiefs to discuss the rest of the route. Two alternatives were presented, both taking the American pressure into account. One is to cut back westwards about five kilometers (three miles) from Elkanah, almost to rejoin the Green Line. From there, the fence would continue south more or less along that line, then head around Jerusalem to the east (to encompass Ma�aleh Adumim), come back toward the Green Line, swing out east again around the Gush Etzion bulge of the southern West Bank, and come back to finish at the Dead Sea, north of Ein Gedi.
The second option differs starkly by going further east from Elkanah, 20 kilometers into the West Bank, to take in Ariel. That would create a "finger" from Elkanah to Ariel and back to the green line of about 60 sq. kilometers (25 sq. miles). This is far less of a bulge into the West Bank than the original plan, which was to take in not only Ariel but also the settlements of Shavei Shomron, Kedumim and Karnei Shomron, and would have involved an enclave five times the size.
Despite opposition from his own right-wing, including Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, and the skepticism of the pro-fence lobby, Defense Ministry officials say they expect Sharon to go for the first option -- building the rest of the fence more or less along the Green Line. Likewise, they say, Sharon�s intention of building an eastern barrier -- between the populated areas of the northern West Bank and the Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley -- has been shelved. "He may have once thought of something like this, as part of a buffer zone between Jordan and the Palestinian Authority," acknowledges a close aide. "But
now it�s definitely off the agenda."
If these officials are correct, and Sharon does follow what might be termed the "Green Line route," he will have been dramatically circumscribed by the Administration. Whether this will reduce Palestinian criticism, of course, is quite another matter.
Colonerl (res.) Netzah Mashiah, the Defense Ministry�s man in charge of the building work, says that completing the Green Line route would take 16-18 months. Of course, he says, "we would build the more sensitive segments [where the bombers have crossed most often] in the center of the country first."
Mashiah rejects criticism that the work to date has been slow. "Do you know anyone who has built a 150 kilometer road, including planning and statutory problems, in 11 months?" he snaps. "It�s like criticizing Carl Lewis for running the hundred meters in 10 seconds and saying why didn�t he do it in 9?"
Mashiah�s fence is the biggest infrastructure project in Israeli history -- bigger than the draining of the Huleh swamps, the national water carrier and the trans-Israel highway (part of which it protects). For the completed section, which constitutes about one third of the total project, five planning companies, 17 infrastructure and electronic companies, architects, landscapers and environmentalists put in a total of 75,000 working days. The cost so far has been 10 million shekels ($2.2 million) a kilometer, including compensation payments for land seized. That means an overall cost, if the entire barrier is completed, of around $1 billion. Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- now a staunch backer of the fence, because he sees in it a key to stability and economic recovery -- has promised that money will not be a problem.
Ariel, though, most certainly is. Whatever the Defense Ministry sources say, Ron Nahman is adamant that the fence will eventually go around his urban settlement.
The Likud mayor of a spotlessly clean city of 18,000, Nahman declares first that Ariel doesn�t really need a fence at all. The way to fight terror, he says, pointedly quoting President Bush, "is to smash the terrorists and those who harbor and finance them, not to put up fences." But, he continues, "on the basis of equality, if Mr. Moti Dalgo, head of the southern Sharon regional council, gets a fence, I want a fence too." Moreover, he says, the Americans, fighting terror all over the world, are the last ones who should be preaching to Israel. "If there had been a fence here, that kid would not have been killed on the road," he says -- referring to the murder of Erez Hersh-kowitz at the Ariel bus stop.
Finally, Nahman remarks that "the left has made a political issue of the fence" -- ensuring that it is perceived as an eventual border. For that reason, Nahman and the rest of the right want it
to encompass Ariel and as many other settlements as possible. "When peace comes," Nahman concludes with a smile, "the fences will come down."
The route around Jerusalem is shaping to cause controversy, too, with arguments here coming from the left. Lawyer Danny Seidman, of the dovish Ir Shalom (City of Peace) group, has seen the yet-to-be-approved plans for fencing and walling the northern and eastern parts of the capital -- and is appalled. On the southern side of the city, between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it is relatively easy to put up a barrier with Israelis one side and Palestinians on the other. Indeed, work on this section, approved last August, is almost complete. But because of the way Israeli and Palestinian neighborhoods criss-cross along the eastern and northern boundaries of the capital, Seidman continues, a separation fence there becomes almost impossible. "It�s like trying to separate Siamese twins with a hatchet."
Ilan Tsion is convinced Sharon has no intention of completing the barrier in Jerusalem, or anywhere else. The prime minister faces a political dilemma, Tsion explains: he fears that anything left out of the fence will be severed from Israel in a final accord. But if he tries to include vast chunks of West Bank territory, he provokes a showdown with Bush. The result: procrastination.
Tsion lists the "evidence" to prove Sharon�s deliberate delaying tactics: Last August, Tsion took the government to the Supreme Court, demanding a target date for completion of the entire project. He never got one. At about the same time, Sharon made a speech attacking the very idea of the fence.
In March, Mofaz told the Knesset that plans for the final stage were complete, and promised a final decision on the route within days. "We�re still waiting," says Tsion.
Soon after that, Sharon spokesman Eyal Arad declared that the prime minister had a new "fence for terror" formula: the less terror there was, the less fence there would be, and vice versa.
And finally, a few weeks back, says Tsion, came the clincher: a written reply from the prime minister�s son, Omri Sharon, to a complaint about the delays from a pro-fence activist. "You say a fence could solve many problems," Omri wrote. "But will a fence stop Israel�s need to fight terror? Will building a fence stop the cruel terror against Israel�s civilian population? Could a fence be used as a negotiating card by the Palestinians? There are many problems between us and the Palestinians. And many ways to solve them."
If the prime minister had given a genuine green light, the fence could have been completed by now and many of the 200-plus Israeli lives lost in the last year saved, Tsion argues. He recalls a meeting with Mashiah last August: "We sat over the maps. I asked him how long it would take to build the first 140 kilometers that had been approved, and he said a year. Then I asked how long it would take if he had been told to build the whole fence, the whole 400 kilometers, and again he said a year, because he would build all the sectors in parallel."
From just below the "Pink House" in the Palestinian village of Sanira, the fence winds south toward Elkanah. There is a haze in the air as the sun beats down on a scorching mid-August day. Although the section is officially complete, heavy machines toil on the finishing touches, watering and rolling a patrol road.
Mashiah says he recognizes some of his handiwork may have to be undone and repeated from scratch -- if the two sides get back to negotiations, and final borders between Israel and Palestine are drawn east of the barrier or west of it.
Still, if that kind of diplomatic progress is made, it would be a small price to pay.
September 8, 2003
Israel
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