Finish The Wall

Palestinian terrorists skirted Israel's partially constructed security barrier blowing up 2 municipal buses in Beersheba, killing at least 16 and wounding dozens. The Christian Science Monitor reports that this was the worst terrorist attack in an Israeli city in almost six months:

The twin explosions - the first ever to rock the largest city in southern Israel - left about 90 injured and shattered one of the longest periods of calm inside Israel since the start of the four-year cycle of violence.

The city's location near the southern edge of the West Bank - which hasn't yet been closed off by Israel's security barrier - raises questions about whether Palestinian militants have shifted their target focus to exploit the opening. The attack is likely to spur Israeli calls to speed up work on the fence, which the International Court of Justice in July declared a "breach of international law."

The wall, envisioned as a matrix of walls, barbed wire, and fences is intended to keep Palestinian terrorists away from Israel cities. The wall has been given credit for a decline in successful terrorist attacks.

"What we've learned in the last half year is that where there is a fence, there's no terror, and where there isn't a fence, there is terror,'' says Israeli Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi.

Only about one third of the wall has been completed. Progress has been slowed by Palestinian legal challenges over the location of the barrier:

Arguing that the snaking path of the fence inside the West Bank constitutes a de facto land grab and creates unnecessary hardship, the Palestinians won a nonbinding ruling from the United Nation's world court in July that raised the specter of international sanctions against Israel.

Both Israel's Supreme Court and the attorney general have reportedly said that the government will have to reexamine the fence construction in light of the UN court ruling.

So reexamine the wall's construction then get on with it. Israel has no real choice. Arafat has proven time and again that he is not to be trusted. Until the Palestinians choose a leader who can, and will, be a true partner for peace the wall, separating Israel from that portion of the West Bank that would become Palestine is the only way to prevent terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. If some future Palestinian Government negotiates a real peace with Israel the wall could always be moved to conform to a negotiated border.

After the World Court Ruling, Israel's deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert said:

"It's certainly unpleasant to have the ruling, but it's more unpleasant to have suicide attacks from territories not defended by the fence," he said. "The fence is probably uncomfortable and inconvenient for the Palestinians who live alongside of it, but it doesn't kill. The fence is removable and reversible, and death is not."

Build the wall. Build it now and wait for the Palestinians to agree to a real peace.

Comments

[Daryl]

I'm constantly puzzled by the often repeated assertion that once the wall is built, a two-state solution will be impossible. As it stands right now, a two-state solution is impossible. Once the wall is built and Israel pulls away onto its own side, the people of the West Bank and Gaza will be free to build their own society, without the iron grip of the Israeli soldiers that currently prevents such progress. There will be no need for peace negotiations, because no Palestinian attacks will be possible. Thus, no Israeli retaliations will occur. Nor will an Israeli settler be able to invade Palestinian land with IDF protection. The land behind the wall will be the country of Palestine. Whether the Palestinian people decide to remain angry and bitter, or work together and build a productive society (as the Israelis once did), is their choice. The two-state solution is entirely possible with, and indeed possible through, the seperation barrier. The argument that peace will be impossible when coupled with an object that stops war is nonsensical, and a mere smokescreen to cover the attitude that Israel must make every sacrifice.

[John S Bolton]

They should build it quickly and work out the fine points afterwards. Openness to aggression is not a proper human value. Israel is among the top few countries for scientific-paper citation indicators; this points to a high value worth preserving. Civilization has superior right over mindless aggression. Israeli investors need assurance that palestinian laborers will not flood back in periodically, before they make any major investments in labor-saving technology. If it is still wanted to use palestinians to carry the hod, on the other side of the fence, to build more accretions of settlements, that will remain possible. Is the rage of the left against this barrier perhaps also about the way it shows how replaceable and often unnecessary the menials are in today's advanced societies?

[Mark Madsen]

Everytime I read about the wall, I have an incredible sense of finality -- of future solutions rendered impossible. No two-state solution is going to work -- there's virtually no infrastructure possible in a fragmented Palestinian state, so any two-state solution possible is an unstable equilibrium.

Sadly, however, it seems like the minority that believes in a multicultural one-state solution is shrinking even further, and will likely be gone if the hard-liners on both sides are allowed to continue.

IMHO, the elusive one-state solution is the only one that secures the area long-term. After all, we're talking about an area the size of, what? The Bay Area? How can you possibly create both security and a stable economy in such a small area with two sovereign nation-states interpenetrating each other's territory? A two-state solution is a mirage, a fantasy that looks good from 10,000 miles away but fails utterly up close.

But the rational solution may be impossible, a thing of the past. In which case, the wall will create a meta-stable equilibrium, separating the hard-liners from each other, allowing a future generation to decide if moderates could possibly figure out a solution that eludes the generation in power which still remembers the events of 1948.