The security fence: its logic and implications
July 31, 2003

Mahmoud Abbas, in his meeting with Bush last weekend, fed the press a new issue to chew on: the security fence. The fence is a security measure, pure and simple, not an attempt to create political borders. Despite all the loud-mouthed comparisons to the Berlin Wall, you can look at the pictures of it (at least the ones I’ve seen), and it looks, well, pretty much like a fence of the common variant.

In the last three years, Mitchell Bard points out below, 250 suicide bombers came from the West Bank...while not a single one came from Gaza. The difference? Gaza has a fence between it and Israel. That’s the logic.

The key to understanding the fence is that it’s a last-resort measure. The road map efforts remains on track, even though months behind schedule. Israeli and Palestinian cabinet-level officials continue to meet, discussing things like turning over this city to Palestinian control, or removing these troops from here, or joint-patrolling there. But should the talks fall apart, Israel asks: what is to prevent a new round of Palestinian terrorism? Nothing, and that’s the problem. And remember, even if the talks did produce an agreement, if the PA doesn’t arrest Hamas and other terrorists – which right now they’re refusing to do – they would be free to launch fresh attacks on Israel.

Even if final-status negotiations were ultimately reached, a fence might be necessary as long as there are Palestinian groups who want to kill Israelis. What happens if the glorious final peace agreement is reached, and then, to the horror of all, a bomb goes off in Jerusalem?

Israel of course has its worries and doubts. All you have to do is look at the end of 2000, when Arafat walked out on the Camp David and Taba talks after being presented with the most generous Israeli offer ever -- a Palestinian state on 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, removal of all settlements save those contiguous to Israel, shareed sovereignty over old Jerusalem, limited refugee return and compensation to others. He then proceeded to initiate the Second Intifada, distinguished from the first by its widespread use of terrorism. The idea was to suicide bomb Israel into making more favorable concessions, but it didn’t work, and the violence became a free-for-all between Palestinian groups competing for popular support.

Below, William Safire presents the idea – which Ariel Sharon related to him – that the reason the Palestinians are so angered by this fence is that it will eliminate their number-one bargaining chip, namely their ability to stop violence. It makes sense: right now, the Palestinians are making various demands, in return for which they promise to arrest militants and break up groups. If the fence makes it enormously difficult for militants to sneak into Israel, which it will, the Palestinians lose an correspondingly enormous amount of leverage in negotiations.

For this reason, around 80 percent of Israeli people support the fence. Among the most vocal opponents have been the hard-line West Bank settlers, who understand that the fence will leave them on the wrong side of safety. A final important implications is that building a fence gives Israel the option of withdrawing unilaterally, that is, without security guarantees, which is sometimes called “divorcing” the Palestinians.


Read William Safire's "Do Fence Me In," in The New York Times, July 31, 2003, which points out the way in which the fence would undercut the Palestinians' bargaining leverage (by having the fence do the job they're supposed to be doing).

Read a fact sheet that summarize the issues involved with security fence by Mitchell Bard of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.