Up against the wall: Israel's 'separation fence' sabotages the road map to regional peace

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 5, 2003 by Paul Jeffrey

The road to peace in the Middle East runs into a wall just outside Shareef Omar Khaled's village. For years the 60-year-old farmer has ridden astride his slow-moving, rusting tractor down the stony path that leads from his village of Jayyous to the acres of olive, fig and walnut trees that feed his family. Yet in the last month a fence has blocked that road. There's a gate in the fence, supposedly for use by village farmers who want to reach their fields, but the key is held by the Israeli military.

In this land of brutal eye-for-an-eye violence, where everything bristles with political meaning, what word one uses to describe the barrier across Khaled's farm road quickly reveals allegiance in the conflict Most Israelis call it "the separation fence"--as in good fences make good neighbors--and claim it is needed to protect them from suicide bombers like the one who blew up a Jerusalem bus Aug. 19, killing 20 people and wounding scores more. The Palestinians call it "the wall," evoking memories of Berlin and claiming the structure represents a wholesale grab of fertile land and fresh water, creating facts on the ground that will leave any eventual Palestinian state with lots of people and no viable way to survive.

Whether fence or wall, the project began, as an initiative of those on the Israeli political center-left who wanted a way to slow the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. But the original idea was to place the fence on the Green Line, the de facto border between Israel and the occupied West Bank since the 1967 war. The fence would work both ways, keeping unwanted Palestinians out while also slowing the dismemberment of the West Bank by the settlements and settler-only roads that have carved the Palestinians' land into pieces. Along with the curfews, road-blocks and humiliating security checkpoints imposed by the Israeli military, the measures have made travel in the West Bank difficult if not impossible.

A zealous proponent of settlements, Ariel Sharon, Israel's current prime minister, was at first opposed to the fence. From the perspective of Sharon and other Israelis, who since the creation of the Jewish state have seen borders as a temporary thing, nothing should stand in the way of "Greater Israel."

Yet as suicide bombers and the media collaborated to build public pressure for the fence, it occurred to Sharon that the barrier could serve the right's interests if he located it not on the Green Line but inside the West Bank. With most of Israel's center-left political forces in disarray following the violence of the second intifada that began in 2000, the right took power and got its wish, and the fence line now snakes in and out of the West Bank, enveloping fertile valleys and hilltop settlements. Proposed future extensions of the fence, including one separating off the Jordan Valley from the rocky highlands, will leave the Palestinians with dramatically less than they've bargained for.

Fence becomes fiasco

Sharon's final solution of fence, settlements and bypass roads will leave the Palestinians endeavoring to form a viable state while living in three separated enclaves--with little farmland or water--occupying only about 42 percent of the West Bank. Forget about Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in East Jerusalem. "Annexed" (rather than occupied) in 1967, East Jerusalem will be fenced out of Palestine and into Israel, creating facts on the ground that preconfigure any final negotiations about the holy city's fate.

Yossi Alpher, an early proponent of the fence for security reasons, argues that the fence "has taken on the dimensions of a fresco" since Sharon "hijacked" the project. An ex-Mossad agent and a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Alpher wrote in his Aug. 11 column on Bitterlemons.org: "Sharon intends to transform the fence from a security-separation barrier to a means of defining the enclave-like nature of that 50 percent or so of the West Bank that he intends to offer the Palestinians as a 'state.'"

The Palestinian Authority, plagued by inefficiency and corruption in the best of times, was slow on the uptake when construction on the barrier got underway a year ago. Villagers affected by the fence traveled to the rubble in Ramallah, where President Yasser Arafat holds court, to plead for help.

With what was to become the internationally sponsored "road map for peace" gaining momentum, however, Palestinian leaders were preoccupied with other matters. Yet under continued pressure from farmers like those in Jayyous, Palestinian diplomats made the rounds in Washington. State Department staffers and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, genuinely horrified at what the Israelis were attempting, convinced President George W. Bush to raise a fuss.

The White House leaked a suggestion that the United States would cut back on Israel's current aid package if the fence didn't change course. But the election campaign had started, and Democrats courting Jewish and Christian Zionist voters jumped on the president for betraying Israel. Bush backed away from a hard line on the barrier, suggesting that the United States could just slap Israel's hand by withholding $1 billion from a $9 billion loan guarantee package awarded--on top of the $3 billion a year in military and other aid--for faithful support of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.