Some Feeling Fenced In by Israel’s Planned Wall

Brenda Glikson, who lives in this Jewish settlement on the West Bank’s western edge, is worried because her house won’t be inside the perimeter. Farmer Eid Ahmad Yassin, who lives in the Palestinian village of Al Ras a few miles north, is worried because his fields will be.

Even though construction has only started, Israel’s $100-million “separation wall” between the Jewish nation and the West Bank already divides people.

Critics say it is an ill-conceived boondoggle that won’t provide security even as it threatens to worsen hostilities. Supporters say it’s the only way to guarantee security and keep Palestinian extremists from killing Israeli civilians.

Both sides agree on one thing, however: It’s going ahead, whether it will be effective or not. The pressure to do something--anything--in the face of dozens of suicide bomb attacks inside Israel is just too great.

“This is an express train leaving the station,” said Danny Seidman, an attorney representing Palestinians who will be displaced by the project. “It’s become an Israeli mantra.”

Plans call for the completion of the first 66-mile segment of the proposed 300-mile north-south barrier by next July, with immediate priority given to a six-mile stretch near the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. Separately, evacuation orders have been issued to Palestinian residents along a 32-mile route on the edge of Jerusalem. It’s unclear whether or how the two barriers will be joined.

Two-thirds of Israelis surveyed have embraced the wall proposal as a counterweight to their growing feelings of vulnerability and desperation.

Security experts say, however, that throwing up some concrete, barbed wire, sensors and lights is no panacea. “For one thing, most suicide bombers come through checkpoints,” not lonely borders, said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank.

Others say that walls are effective only if they’re backed up by shoot-on-sight policies, as seen with the Iron Curtain.

“I don’t exactly think that would improve our PR image,” said Israel Medad, a member of the Yesha Council, the umbrella group representing Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “And no fence can prevent incursions by a Kassam rocket.”

Although the barrier won’t prevent extremists from getting through, experts argue, it could institutionalize the divide between ordinary people on both sides who are arguably the best long-term hope for peace.

“The long-term signal is that there won’t be economic interaction in the future between Israelis and Palestinians,” said Mark Heller, an analyst at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv.

It also threatens to destroy the livelihood of Palestinian farmers--some of whose land has been in their families for decades--thereby risking greater militancy among moderates.

Senior Israeli military officials estimate that 11,000 Palestinians and 20,000 Arab residents of Jerusalem will be displaced. Palestinian cartographer Khalil Tufakji charges that the wall’s deviations from the so-called Green Line will absorb 30 square miles of Palestinian land. The Green Line marks the pre-1967 border that divides Israel and the West Bank territories and is seen by many as the basis for any future political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

“This project will destroy Palestinian economies and the heritage of these villages,” Tufakji said.

Others, however, say the project is workable. Nothing is impenetrable, acknowledged Nezah Mashiah, the project’s director in the Israeli Defense Ministry, but he pointed to the effectiveness of his other handiwork: the barrier he helped build around the Gaza Strip, home to more than 1 million Palestinians.

Mashiah conceded that most suicide bombers come through checkpoints, but he argued that new transit stations with metal detectors and airport-like security will end this. Every effort is being made to avoid upending lives, he said; houses won’t be destroyed, although greenhouses and farm structures might.

Even Mashiah admits he’s not a big fan of the wall because it signals a fundamental breakdown between the two sides. But he argues that his creation could be quickly torn down if there’s a political breakthrough.

“For genuine peace,” he said, “$100 million is nothing.”

One of the project’s most visible early results has been to turn thousands of Palestinians and Israelis into amateur surveyors.

The wall has been diverted to include settlements--controversial developments built in the West Bank on land the Palestinians claim as their own--that are located within a few miles of Israel.

Glikson, of the 180-family Maaleh Shomron settlement, which will fall outside the wall by a few miles, believes that the project is a slap in the face to those excluded.

“It makes us feel like we’re second-class citizens,” she said. “If you’re going to have a fence, bring us back to Israel and rebuild our houses there. This is a de facto border.”

Nor, she believes, is it workable. Maaleh Shomron’s suburban driveways, landscaping and ample lots have been guarded and fenced in from neighboring Arab villages for years but still suffer regular incursions--not by so-called terrorists but by thieves, she says.

A few miles away, Palestinian farmer Yassin, the father of five, stands to lose several acres. And his village will lose 95% of its olive groves and fields, which fall on the Israeli side, even as its residents are left on the other side.

“The Israelis aren’t thinking of their security,” Yassin said. “They only want to take our land. If they want to build a wall, fine, but build it on the Green Line, not here.”

The village has filed complaints, so far to no avail.

Defense Ministry officials counter that the divide is being built only for security, does not represent a political divide and isn’t meant to absorb Palestinian lands. Palestinian villagers will be able to pass through “farmer’s gates” to till fields, the ministry claims, contingent on their not abusing these rights.

Mashiah outlines the project with an engineer’s precision: first a barbed-wire fence to warn those who inadvertently come too close, followed by a ditch or wall, a road for troops to patrol, a lighted fence, a sensor-filled tracking path, a second road for patrols, another sensor track and finally a barbed-wire fence on the other side. Total width: 165 feet. Total height: at least 11 feet, rising to 26 feet in places where the two populations are close together.

For Mahmoud Turani, a 70-year-old baker who’s lived in a three-story house in East Jerusalem since 1973, the timing couldn’t be worse. His family plunked down $110,000 to expand its property westward a few months before the wall was announced, land that will now be used for the barrier.

“This is our life’s savings,” Turani said, his skin wrinkled by years of Mideast sun. “We sold my wife’s jewelry, our musical instruments, everything, and now this happens. The whole world is going crazy.”

The military counters that all those facing expropriation--the vast majority of them Palestinian--will be compensated at fair market rates. But for most Palestinians, negotiating with Israel and accepting payment for land is politically treacherous because it amounts to selling out your future state and recognizing Israel’s authority over the West Bank.

“We don’t accept compensation,” said Mohammed Hinini, 65, who lives next to the proposed route of the East Jerusalem wall. “This is our homeland.”

Even if they did agree to sell, issues of so-called fair market value are problematic on both sides. Rawhi Bashiti, 37, Hinini’s neighbor and owner of an auto body shop, says area land values fell 90% almost as soon as the project was announced. Settlement resident Glikson says she doubts she could find a buyer for her house now.

Since the project was announced in June, the military has been besieged with requests to alter its course, even as it tries to find a way to balance security and those directly affected.

The Israeli community of Matan has mounted one of the most vocal protests despite the fact that it will be wholly inside the planned wall. Residents blocked a nearby highway, besieged the Defense Ministry and launched a major publicity campaign. Their fear is that the wall’s path would allow two nearby Arab communities to merge, creating what it claims would be a “harbor for terrorists.”

Israeli officials say privately that non-Palestinian groups with well-organized protests probably will get their way. With political clout the only hope of redirecting the wall, however, Palestinian groups don’t expect much of a hearing. Nor do the courts provide much hope, they add, given that eviction orders fall under military rather than civilian jurisdiction.

Voices on both sides say the wall is tangible evidence of weak political leadership on both sides even as it raises deeper questions about who’s being fenced in and who’s being fenced out.

“Not only does a wall physically restrict the Palestinians,” said Suhad Bishara, an attorney with the nongovernmental Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights. “It also acts as a mental and psychological barrier for the Israeli population. Living in situations where you’re surrounded by walls doesn’t calm the situation. It only makes it worse.”

As Bashiti’s eyes drifted over the East Jerusalem hills where he grew up, played hide-and-seek as a kid and held many mutton cookouts with friends, he added: “All we can do is hope things work out in the long run. Who knows? It took 40 years, but eventually people tore down the Berlin Wall with their bare hands.”