Barrier to Peace at Israeli Border

The adherents of globalization tell us that we are moving toward a borderless world -- one in which the physical fences of national separation are gradually disappearing.

But it appears that the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon hasn’t signed on to this theory. During the course of the last year, Israel has busily been constructing the new separation fence between itself and the Occupied Territories in the West Bank. Six feet high, in some places as wide as 30 feet and intended to eventually stretch the 230-mile length of the West Bank, the barricade has created a physical and emotional scar running through the heart of this bitterly contested landscape.

Sharon would have us believe that this is merely a security fence aimed at keeping Palestinian suicide bombers out of Israel and enhancing public safety. But in reality, the fence is much more than that; it’s potentially a future political border, and it is a symbol of the ultimate physical separation of Israeli and Palestinian territories and their respective peoples.

Sharon was never a great proponent of this fence for precisely this reason. He did not want Israel to fall into its own trap of creating facts on the ground that would then determine the future boundary of a new Palestinian state. He agreed to build the fence only under strong public pressure in favor of the project, which is perceived by many as a panacea for Israel’s security problems.

But in fact, a new border is being created. Some of the sections of the fence that have already been constructed do not run along the Green Line -- the administrative boundary formally used to separate Israel from the West Bank since 1949. In some places, the fence has been pushed a few miles east to include on the Israeli side as many Israeli settlements as possible, thus discouraging their future dismantlement under a comprehensive peace agreement between the two sides. In some cases, this has pulled Arab villages onto the Israeli side as well, even though common sense says they should remain on the Palestinian side.

The fence itself is not really a fence at all, at least the way one is thought of in suburban America. In some places it is a triple parallel line of impassable barbed-wire fortifications separated by Israeli patrol roads. In other sections, it is a 6-foot concrete wall, raising the specter of bygone days in Berlin.

But walls and fences are much more than their physical constructions. They radiate a message to those who are excluded and tell them categorically, “You belong there, we belong here.”

Before the construction of the fence, there existed a clear perception of where it was safe or unsafe to cross. No one needed a fence to tell Israelis where they would be unsafe, or Palestinians where they would be subject to security checks and arrest. Now the wall provides an added dimension, a sense of invisibility and a sort of permanence that tells the two peoples that, whatever the outcome of political negotiations, we will end up in our separate territorial compartments, not as friends or acquaintances but as antagonists.

And though the wall may add a small amount of perceived security for Israelis, it only exacerbates the security needs of Palestinians. That’s because Palestinian security needs are not just physical but economic. If peace is to work between the two peoples, Palestinians require access to jobs, the ability to bring home bread for their families; they must escape the cycle of poverty that makes them even more frustrated and willing to join the ranks of those prepared to blow themselves up in Israeli restaurants and buses in revenge.

In the long term, there are those in the security establishment who believe that a peace agreement must be accompanied by even stronger fences and higher walls, that we can have conflict resolution but never full peace, that we must continue to mistrust the intentions of the people on the other side of the fence -- and that borders are barriers designed to prevent contact, cooperation and movement from one side to the other.

There are others who believe that “bordering” is a two-way process, that it enables the creation of zones of interaction, a sort of frontier area in which the walls are slowly dismantled and people come together, strengthening peace through cooperation, joint planning and common projects.

The separation wall is much more than a fence. It raises much larger issues of just how the two groups wish to live as neighbors if and when a peace agreement is signed.

Good fences may indeed create good neighbors, but if we were to try to transform the existing animosity into embryonic feelings of neighborliness, then we may end up not needing fences or walls at all.

David Newman is a professor of political geography at Ben Gurion University in Israel.