The fence works
West Bank fence certainly contributed to decline in terror
Israel is constructing a new crossing point for the Palestinians on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives, where the calls of the muezzin, the ringing church bells and the biblical scenery all blend into one.
The Defense Ministry is painting the concrete here in orange, just like the other crossings - not out of political subversion, God forbid, but to make those waiting at the crossing happy. Here and there, the orange is decorated with blue; not to balance out the political message, but only to make people happy.
The Palestinian workers all hail from Hebron. Chipper fellows, these Palestinians: They quickly climb the naked metal foundation of the security scanning device and hang on to it upside down, their feet facing the concrete wall that now surrounds Jerusalem, and their heads facing the white, dusty ground that has been leveled by the bulldozers.
“When we are done here,” one of the workers asked me last Wednesday, “Do you think we will get an entry permit?”
Two days earlier, Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim visited the crossing in the framework of a tour of the Jerusalem-area security fence. But the Jerusalem-area fence does not exactly surround Jerusalem: For part of the population, it serves as a shield, for others, a life-severing knife and chokehold.
The Jerusalem-area segment of the security fence marks the barrier’s midsection. By the end of the year, most of the fence, from Tirat Zvi in the north to Metzadot Yehuda in south Mount Hebron, will be fully operational.
The security fence is one of the largest, costliest and most controversial projects in the country’s history, and it seems that it is the only project launched due to public pressure.
High-level government officials objected, and then succumbed. (Prime Minister Ariel Sharon feared the fence’s route would determine Israel’s future borders; Vice Premier Shimon Peres feared the exact same thing, but for the opposite reasons.) Today, retroactively, Sharon is warmly adopting the fence.
No one can determine the fence’s precise contribution to the drastic drop in terror in general and in suicide bombings in particular. There are many reasons behind the decrease in terror: The improvement in the work of the IDF and Shin Bet; Arafat’s demise; the exhaustion on the Palestinian side, and the wandering of international terror to other regions, namely Iraq, Afghanistan and London.
But the fence has, and still is, contributing significantly - there is no doubt about that. When the damage (unnecessary at times) inflicted by the fence on Palestinian daily life is mentioned, along with the severe damage to the scenery in Jerusalem, and even more so in Bethlehem, we must recall how crazy and impossible life was without it.
The construction of the fence is expected to cost nearly NIS 10 billion (about USD 2.3 billion), and the disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank is expected to cost the country a similar amount. If the Finance Ministry is able to tackle these two projects simultaneously, it apparently has more money than it has us believe.
Gates of Jerusalem
Sunday, the government will approve a recommendation by a committee headed by Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert that deals with the ramifications of the Jerusalem-area security fence on the city’s Palestinian population.
Out of 11 planned crossing points between Jerusalem and the West Bank, Olmert decided to make just one - between Jerusalem and Bethlehem - permanent. All other crossing points will be temporary.
The decision is much more interesting, and more dramatic, than it appears at first glance.
Olmert is asking to leave the door open for shrinking Jerusalem. Large parts of the Arab neighborhoods annexed in 1967 will one day return to be part of the West Bank.
His reasoning is demographic: The fewer Arab neighborhoods, he says, the better. Anyone concerned about Jerusalem as the capital of Israel knows it is the correct decision.
The problem is the clash it creates with the platitudes of politicians – until recently, including Olmert – about Jerusalem as the united, indivisible capital of Israel.
The Supreme Court is also uninterested in demographics.
When the court debates the security fence, it considers only one equation: Israeli security benefit versus the harm to Palestinian daily life.
Where the fence route was justified by demographic concerns, the Supreme Court rejected it.
Any agreement reached in Jerusalem, if reached, will be decided along demographic lines.
Every proposal ever put on the table, from former president Clinton to Geneva, has gone along these lines. But the Supreme Court has decided, for better or worse, to be color-blind.
Some 250,000 Arabs have blue, Jerusalem identity cards. Some 130,000 of them will live inside the fence. Meanwhile, 55,000 will live “in” Jerusalem but outside the security fence. Another 70,000 will reside in the West Bank.
Very few of them like Israel, but all of them want to stay here. All the appeals they file at the Supreme Court ask that they be left inside the fence, inside Jerusalem.
It’s the center of their lives and livelihoods. It is also their bridge to the First World: Jerusalem Arabs earn about USD 3,500 a year on average; West Bankers earn about 1,000.
As Jerusalem residents, they are entitled to health insurance and national insurance. They may lag behind Israeli Jews, but their situation is far better than their relatives in the Palestinian Authority.
They one illustrative way to pay Israel back for what it gives them: Jerusalem Arabs’ involvement in terrorism has been inconsequential, especially in contrast to what it could be.
Danny Seidemann, a lawyer who has represented Palestinians on many appeals over the fence issue, says fence planners understand topography, but fail to understand people.
“Human will is the explosive material in Jerusalem,” he says. “Anyone who undermines their daily lives and livelihood is inviting terror.”
The backyard
The drive along the Jerusalem fence route is similar to a train ride through an eastern European country – it crosses the country's and city's backyards and armpits.
The deserted hills in the south of the city, bordering on the desert, have turned a long time ago into construction waste dumpsites. Meanwhile, the outskirts of the Shuafat refugee camp in the east are a flourishing illegal construction venue.
Colonel (Res.) Danny Tirza, the fence builder, claims that thousands of Palestinian residents holding orange, non-Israeli identity cards reside there, a stone's throw away from homes in the Jewish Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood.
In the north, Defense Ministry officials are planning to build thousands of residential units, under the noses of the Americans.
A giant bridge would connect the settlement of Adam to an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood called Geva, slated to house 6,000 residential units.
Adam, which was planned to remain outside the fence, would somehow be brought inside it. Adam residents like the move, but do not want the ultra-Orthodox.
Meanwhile, Highway 45, slated to connect Ben Shemen to Jerusalem through the Ramallah area, will be split into two parallel roads, one for Jews, another for Arabs, and a stone wall in the middle.
In Dahiat al-Barid, a north Jerusalem neighborhood, Israel took into consideration Christian monasteries that demanded to be included in the fence. Now, Israel is being sued by Muslim institutes who are charging they are being discriminated again - they, too, want to be inside.
The barrier route's drawbacks are patently clear. Its advantages, however, are hidden from view.
Two days ago, after I again visited a section of the route, a Border Guard jeep pursued me through east Jerusalem's streets, with its siren blaring.
The police officer, named Amal and a resident of the village of Maghar in the Galilee, was very polite.
Why me, I asked, what did I do wrong?
"The camera saw you coming in and out," Amal said. "We wanted to find out what you're doing here."
We parted as friends.
Nahum Barnea is a columnist for Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth
