Posted on 06/16/2002 5:21:53 PM PDT by Pokey78
Israel began work yesterday on the first stage of a 200-mile fence designed to stop Palestinians bombers and gunmen entering from the West Bank.
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The construction work was greeted with almost messianic fervour by many Israelis who believe it will end the series of 70 suicide bombings that have taken place over the past 20 months.
"Without this fence there is no chance of peace. The fence will provide us with the security that will enable us to go back to negotiations when this phase of violence is over," said Danny Attar, head of Gilboa regional council in northern Israel, which is close to the Palestinian town of Jenin, source of many suicide bombings.
Mr Attar, who has long been lobbying for the fence, compared it to the Berlin Wall, but said it would not last as long, being required only until peace is established. "In 10 years we will break it down," he said. "I want to do it with my own hands."
While the Left in Israeli politics sees the construction as a shield against attack, the Palestinians, as well as the Israeli far Right and the settlers, see it as more ominous, though for very different reasons.
It was described by Palestinian spokesmen as entrenching South African-style apartheid.
Alhough the exact line of the fence is not clear, it will be built on Palestinian land, requiring the confiscation of hundreds of acres.
"This fence will be a fence of hate. The 'whites' will be in Tel Aviv and the 'blacks' will be in the West Bank," said Mohammed Dahlan, a retired Palestinian security chief.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, has long delayed building the fence because of fears shared with the settler movement - of which he was for years a patron - that it will come to be seen as Israel's eastern border.
The fence will leave tens of thousands of Israeli settlers in the West Bank on the wrong side, raising fears that their dream of annexing the Palestinian territories to Israel is being compromised.
Israel has spent decades trying to rub out the memory of its old eastern border, which Israeli troops crossed in the 1967 Six-Day War, when they conquered all the land up to the Jordan.
A fierce argument erupted during yesterday's cabinet meeting, with Effie Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party, the settlers' lobby, saying: "The meaning of this fence is a return to the 1967 borders, and the establishment of a national boundary."
Mr Sharon was denounced by Right-wingers as "defeatist". They said Israel had always taken offensive action into the homes of its enemies, rather than cowering behind a fence. Mr Sharon agreed to hold a special cabinet session on Wednesday to discuss where the fence will run.
The first stage of 75 miles, sealing off the Palestinian towns of Jenin, Qalqiliya and Tulkarm, will cost about £80 million.
During a visit to the construction site yesterday at Salem, 10 miles from Jenin, the Israeli defence minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, said the fence had no political meaning as a boundary, but was just a temporary security measure.
To placate the ideologues of Greater Israel - the idea that God gave the Jews all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean - the fence is formally known as a "continuous obstacle."
Not even the defence minister believes that the fence will stop all infiltrations. From a military point of view it is questionable since the army still has to guard the West Bank settlements.
It is about time the Israelis recognized that those people living there are the enemy and foreign to Israel and treat them as aliens. They can not come bomb Israel if Israel establishes a border between them. That would also defacto give the Pale's a state and then IF they continue to attack Israel, Israel is within its rights to go take out the government, ie Arafat!
Since when is building a wall to protect your population from the influx of maniacs who attack and murder them almost daily.... the moral equivalent to the Berlin Wall which was built for the purpose of imprisoning an entire population and preventing them from seeking freedom?
The moral confusion of the British press is amazing.
I'm sure the mine field gave you boys a little more sense of security!
In your territory or someone else's?
Why imply that it's a prison for Palestinians? If the Israelis and Palestinians came to a peace deal tomorrow, there would surely be a border. Why is one side of the border considered "a prison"? It's asinine, and typical of the disatisfaction of the left and the Arabists. Nothing is ever good enough for them.
The comparison between the "whites" and the "blacks" is also asinine and incredibly insulting not only to whites and blacks, but to themselves (brown?). They can make what they can make of their semi-state. So far they have chosen to make nothing of it, except to fight for that nothingness. If they think they are "the blacks" (whatever that means), then it's their own damn fault for following a regime of terror and incitement and doing next to nothing to improve their lot in life.
As opposed to the vision of a Palestinian state, which embodies Judenrein, Jew-free National socialism.
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