Smart Genes on Israel’s Wall
| June 18th, 2003Over at Smart Genes, Rick argues that the Wall doesn’t matter much. (Link via Civic Dialogues).
Apparently Rick doesn’t think that the “facts on the ground” problem exists at all. By building the Wall, Sharon is attempting to create facts on the ground which will determine how future peace negotiations will go. It is far easier for Sharon - or for a future prime minister after Sharon - to give up the Wall before Israel sinks another hundred million dollars into building it.
Furthermore, no peace treaty is viable unless Palestinian leaders can convince ordinary Palestinians that Israel is sincere about a peace agreement, and can be trusted to make and keep such an agreement. (The vice-versa is also true, of course). Just as building ever more settlements convinced many Palestinians that Israel wasn’t serious about Oslo, a wall built miles inside Palestinian terratory is a powerful argument that Israel is not approaching “the road map” in good faith. If Israel wants to be seen as a sincere negotiating partner, then it must halt all land-grab activities - or even activities that appear to be land-grabbing to Palestinians. If Israel is not willing to do that, then Palestinian leaders who favor negotiations will not seem very credible.
Israel cannot seriously negotiate peace while building new settlements, or while building this Wall. Whatever Israel’s intentions, if their actions speak of land-grabbing, no one outside of Israel and the US will take Israeli claims of wanting a peaceful settlement seriously.
Rick makes up another argument against the wall - that it will impair suicide bombing. (Although no doubt some folks in Hamas have this objection, I doubt anyone in the American or European left has objected to the Wall on these grounds; tellingly, Rick doesn’t provide a link to anyone making this supposed argument). Rick then argues that it won’t do so. If the Wall - or “security fence” - won’t impair suicide bombings, then why build it?
(Fortunately, I think Rick’s wrong - although it won’t be 100% effective, the Wall - if built correctly, along the Green Line - might well reduce suicide bombings by blocking some bombers. For that reason, I do think it should be built - but along the 1967 lines.)
Finally, Rick ignores a major argument against the Wall, which is that it does a tremendous amount of harm to Palestinians, especially Palestinian farmers, by depriving them of their property - and livelihood. From Edward Sheehan’s essay in the current New York Review of Books:
Some members of the mayor’s staff took me to see the parts of the fence that run near the town. It is placed in a huge gash in the land between 65 and 110 yards wide. Above a barbed-wire barrier, you see a towering concrete wall nearly 30 feet high with watchtowers nearby; a security road runs alongside it and trenches full of rocks, and more barbed wire, all creating a cordon sanitaire. Near Qalqilya the fence deviates from the green line to protect the Jewish settlements of Zufin, Alfe Menashe, and Oranit, in effect incorporating them into Israel proper while isolating the Arab villages of Jayus, Ras Atiya, Daba, Ras Tireh, and Habla and cutting them off from their farmlands.
The mayor of Qalqilya told me that thousands of his people have fled abroad in search of work, and that thousands more have become “internal refugees” chased from their land and reduced to penury. “Fifteen aquifer wells in the area of Qalqilya have been taken by the Israelis, who have diverted the waters for their own use,” the mayor said. “This destroys our agriculture and our source of income. Qalqilya is being choked to death.” Western aid officials in the West Bank told me that the Israelis are working twenty-four hours a day to complete the fence, apparently intending it to form a new border of the West Bank before peace negotiations get underway.
The Wall creates unjustifiable hardships for ordinary Palestinians, while also creating a barrier against peace. It should be torn down; at the very least, Israel should stop building it.
(By the way, Sheehan’s entire essay - which is about more than just the wall - is well worth reading. Like Sheehan, I doubt that any serious progress towards peace can happen while Sharon is in power, and perhaps not until Arafat takes mercy on us all by dying of old age).
June 18th, 2003 at 6:40 am
Good post. The fence, more than anything else, is going to have psychological effects for both sides. To the Israelis it will create an illusion of security (no fence will ever stop a determined suicide bomber), and to the Palestinians it is yet another sign that the Sharon government wants to push them as far East as they can.
It is a waste of Israeli money in a time where the country’s economy is in trouble because of the intafada.
This comment was written by BFH.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 2:20 pm
I’ve responded at http://www.smartgenes.com
Simply said, no solution to the mideast problem can depend on “psychology” There needs to be physical separation between the parties (NOT apartheid. The Palestinians will have their state).
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June 18th, 2003 at 5:20 pm
Excellent post. Thank you.
This comment was written by Al-Muhajabah.Report this comment to the moderators
June 19th, 2003 at 2:03 pm
Why not make the line of physical separation within what the UN recognizes to be Israeli territory, then? I can get with the Wall as solution, but not if it is done as a way to pretend that Palestinian territory is Israel’s.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
June 19th, 2003 at 3:27 pm
And what do the actions of the Israeli government today, evacuating illegal settlements speak of?
This comment was written by Allison.Report this comment to the moderators
June 19th, 2003 at 4:06 pm
Does it speak of Israel doing something that it had agreed to do years ago? It is certainly an action to be applauded.
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June 19th, 2003 at 5:27 pm
There’s nothing magical about the so-called “Green Line”. It’s just the 1949 cease-fire line. There’s really nothing that makes it any more legal or legitimate than the 1967 cease-fire line. The border with Egypt has been fixed by the 1979 treaty, but no such treaty exists with either Jordan or Syria. The notion that Israel has some sort of obligation to honor the 1949 line above all others doesn’t sound reasonable to me.
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September 25th, 2003 at 1:22 pm
Tahnk you! i completly agree
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July 12th, 2004 at 10:41 am
This is great stuff:
The Israeli wall, which has stopped 90% of suicide bombings, has been declared illegal by the Hague.
And then there’s this priceless quote:
“The court’s head judge, Shi Jiuyong of China, said in the ruling:
‘The wall … cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order.”
I guess he forgot about a certain other wall in his country.
From: gutrumbles.blog-city.com
This comment was written by ladyj.Report this comment to the moderators
July 12th, 2004 at 10:43 am
The Israeli wall, which has stopped 90% of suicide bombings, has been declared illegal by the Hague.
And then there’s this priceless quote:
“The court’s head judge, Shi Jiuyong of China, said in the ruling: ‘The wall … cannot be justified by military exigencies or by the requirements of national security or public order.”
I guess he forgot about a certain other wall in his country.”
From www.gutrumbles.blog-city.com
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July 12th, 2004 at 11:46 am
Joey, you are a spamming poopyhead.
Go away.
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July 14th, 2004 at 12:32 am
“When Israel builds a fence to keep out terrorists, the UN and EU are up in arms because it makes it difficult for terrorists to kill more Jews.
When terrorists shoot (point blank!) an 8-month-pregnant Jewish woman and her 4 little girls, there is absolute silence from your organizations.
The security fence is a temporary and nonviolent way to reduce terrorism. The fence is a proportional response to the ongoing Palestinian Campaign of terror. When the terrorism stops, the fence can be taken down.
The route of the fence was designed to save the lives of innocent people. Israel has the right and the duty to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks.
Since the erection of the security fence there has been a 90% decrease in the number of attacks against Israelis-from an average of 26 attacks per year before the fence to three attacks after the fence was built.
The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that areas of the fence must be adjusted in order to relieve Palestinian hardship. Unlike any other country in the region, Israel has an independent judiciary. Israel, a democracy committed to the rule of law, will comply with the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision.
The security fence is not a wall, as the court states. The majority of the fence is constructed of barb wire-8.5 kilometers of the fence consists of concrete slabs, in order to prevent sniper fire.
There are many disputed security fences around the world-India has constructed a fence in the contested area of Kashmir, and Saudi Arabia has constructed a barrier in an undefined area along the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border-yet only Israel’s security fence has prompted an International Court of Justice ruling. See this website: (www.washingtoninstitute.org/distribution…)
Israel is willing to make painful sacrifices for peace. Israel has made peace with Jordan and Egypt, and gave up the entire Sinai-land larger than the current state of Israel.
And then there is the issue of media bias against Israel.
In a study last year, the media watchdog HonestReporting found that in “100 percent of headlines” when Reuters wrote about Israeli acts of violence, Israel was emphasized as the first word; also, an active voice was used, often without explaining that the “victim” may have been a gunman. A typical headline was: “Israeli Troops Shoot Dead Palestinian in W. Bank” (July 3, 2003). By contrast, when Palestinians attacked Israelis (ALMOST ALWAYS CIVILIANS!), Reuters usually avoided naming the perpetrator. For example: “New West Bank Shooting Mars Truce” (July 1, 2003). In many cases, the headline was couched in a passive voice.
Sometimes, Reuters presents unreliable information as though it were undoubtedly true. Most people are unlikely to notice this. For example, Reuters will note that “a doctor at the hospital said the injured Palestinian was unarmed” — when in fact the doctor couldn’t possibly have known this, since he wasn’t present at the gunfight. But because he is a doctor, Reuters is suggesting to readers that his word is necessarily authoritative. Unfortunately, Reuters headlines and text are used unchanged by newspaper editors because they assume it is professional, balanced copy, which doesn’t need any further editing.
As Ehud Ya’ari, Israeli television’s foremost expert on Palestinian affairs, put it: “The vast majority of information of every type coming out of the area is being filtered through Palestinian eyes. Cameras are angled to show a tainted view of the Israeli army’s actions and never focus on Palestinian gunmen. Written reports focus on the Palestinian version of events. And even those Palestinians who don’t support the intifada dare not show or describe anything embarrassing to the Palestinian Authority, for fear they may provoke the wrath of Arafat’s security forces.”
But things may well be improving. Lately, with a new Jerusalem bureau chief, Reuters has taken some steps to ensure greater balance. For example, it no longer claims Hamas’s goal is merely “to set up an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza” (which it is not), but instead writes that Hamas is “sworn to Israel’s destruction” (which it is).
The solution to all of this seems simple enough. Get rid of that crusty ass terrorist Arafat, decapitate Hamas, and democratize Palestine…no biggie.
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