The hole in the wall

Israel's so-called Security Fence is a recipe for disaster, not security, argues Steve Niva*

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Israeli's are being dangerously misled if they believe that building a combination of walls and fences around the Palestinians in the West Bank will end Palestinian suicide bombings and enhance Israel's overall security.

Israeli officials consistently tout the security benefits of this controversial barrier for Israel, especially in response to Palestinian claims that it is simply an excuse to steal more Palestinian land for Israeli settlements and herd them into tiny and isolated enclaves in perpetuity.

In rebuking President Bush's mild criticism of the barrier at his recent White House meeting, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon insisted that "We are forced to construct [the barrier] in order to defend our citizens against terror activities."

But Israeli security claims about the barrier cannot be taken at face value.

No barrier is impermeable, as experiences from China's Great Wall to the high-tech fence on the US-Mexican border will attest. And Israel's barrier has even more serious flaws from a security perspective.

Its most glaring flaw is that the barrier is being built mostly inside the internationally accepted 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank in order to insure the maximum number of Israeli settlements and land on its Israeli side. The barrier's contorted loops and zigzags surround several key Palestinian areas and dissect others, making it the antithesis of a clean and effective security partition.

The inclusion of so many settlements also extends the barrier's length from 360km, the length of the 1967 border, to what some estimate to be 650km, straining Israel's capability to patrol it effectively. Even if the security systems were to warn of an incursion, by the time the chase was organised, terrorists would already have gained entry into targeted Israeli towns.

And there is always the possibility that terrorists will enter Israel through the numerous checkpoints and gates that will control passage through the barrier. In fact, a July 2002 report on border security by Israel's State Comptroller contends that most of the suicide bombers in the past few years actually entered Israel through existing checkpoints "where they underwent faulty and even shoddy checks".

And even if Israel were to improve its checkpoints, potential terrorists may shift tactics and attempt to go under (through tunnelling) or over (by using missiles), which has already happened in Gaza. The missile threat is more acute in the West Bank, given its proximity to Israeli population centres.

As a result, the Israeli defence analyst, Ze'ev Schiff, admitted in a January Ha'aretz article that the fence itself could not provide complete protection and that the Israeli army would be compelled to operate on the Palestinian side of the barrier.

Israeli officials frequently point to the success of a similar electrified fence built around the Gaza Strip. In the past three years not a single Palestinian suicide bomber has managed to get across the Gaza barrier into Israel. They have all come from the West Bank.

But Gaza's barrier, in contrast to that planned for the West Bank, is geometrical, easily visible and short (55km). Quite possibly, Palestinian militants have put little effort into subverting the Gaza barrier because of easier passage through the West Bank.

Yet the most dangerous aspect of the planned barrier for Israel is that it will likely endanger Israel's long-term security by fuelling Palestinian desperation, creating an incentive for even more destructive forms of terrorism.

A recent World Bank study contends that imprisoning Palestinians within tiny enclaves and separating them from fertile land and Israeli markets (particularly for labour) would condemn them to permanent impoverishment and trigger intense national frustration. The Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem, in its April 2003 report on the barrier, asserts that the barrier will likely inflict severe economic or social dislocation on at least 210,000 Palestinians in 67 towns and villages in its first phase alone.

When the wall from the northern West Bank to Jerusalem is completed, Israel will have annexed over seven per cent of the West Bank, as well as 39 illegal Israeli settlements with 270,000 settlers, and also 290,000 Palestinians. 70,000 of these do not have Israeli residency and have no right to travel or get services from Israel, although Israel is depriving them of their livelihoods in the West Bank. These Palestinians are extremely vulnerable and will probably be gradually forced to emigrate from these areas. Even some Israeli settlers understand the dangerous implications of Palestinian desperation for Israel's security.

"The fence is a death sentence for the Palestinians," the Israeli settler Shmil Elad told Israel's Yedioth Aharanot newspaper in May. "The fence is a mistake, it will only exacerbate the problem, it will make the people more frustrated. People here want to work, and you are creating more hatred instead of the possibility of living together."

Israel's barrier, in its current form, sacrifices Israel's genuine security needs in favour of holding on to the maximum possible number of Israeli settlements and preventing the emergence of viable Palestinian state. It is a political project of territorial expansion, shrouded in security rhetoric.

The best way for Israel to ensure both its immediate and long-term security needs is to immediately withdraw its soldiers and settlers behind defensible borders with a viable and independent Palestinian state that has an incentive to police its militants.

As Henry Siegman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, argues, "it would be far easier for Israel to deal with terrorism from a neighbouring state than terrorism from 3.5 million people it is deeply intertwined with and whose national aspirations it represses."

The illusion that building a wall around an entire people will bring Israel security is not only destructive for Palestinians, but it could also be deadly for Israelis.

* The writer teaches international politics and Middle East Studies at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. He is an associate of The Middle East Research and Information Project ( www.merip.org)