The current violence in Israel and Palestine has demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the separation barrier, the concrete wall/barbed wire fence that Israel began erecting inside Palestine 13 years ago during the second intifada to provide security. The wall is as high as 25 feet in some places, and travels for hundreds of miles inside Palestine, mostly east of the Green Line, grabbing territory that was supposed to go to a Palestinian state under the Oslo accords.
Most of the Palestinian attacks have taken place on the Israeli side of the separation barrier. Last week, for instance, several Israelis and an American were attacked inside the Gush Etzion settlement in the occupied West Bank, but on the Israeli side of the wall, while several other attacks by Palestinians have taken place in East Jerusalem, also inside the wall.
And though attacks have also taken place in Hebron, on the Palestinian side of the wall, those attacks demonstrate the intermingling of the Jewish settlers and Palestinians inside the occupied territories.
Israel characterized the wall as a security fence and separation barrier. But hundred of thousands of East Jerusalem and West Bank Palestinians live on the free side, the “Israel side” of the fence– not to mention the million-plus Palestinians living inside Israel. Jerusalem City Councilman Aryeh King says that since the creation of the wall, 80,000 Palestinians who live on the wrong side of the wall have moved to the west side of it, mostly into Jerusalem, so they could have greater freedom of movement. Human beings would naturally move to escape cages and checkpoints, King said. And several East Jerusalem Palestinians have been among the attackers.
As for the West Bank, the wall was designed so as to enclose large Jewish population centers on the West Bank. So it goes around the Gush Etzion settlement, where several attacks have taken place.
It is certainly likely that the wall has stopped other Palestinians from undertaking attacks they might have if they could have gotten to Jewish communities; the list of attacks doesn’t include events near the concrete wall itself. But all barriers in the West Bank are porous. For instance, it costs about 40 shekels ($10) to cross the wall at Abu Dis– Palestinians can pay a middle man, use his ladder, and catch a shared taxi waiting on the other end.
One lesson of the violence is that the wall didn’t provide security during the relative lull in violence from 2005-2015. It was Palestinian officials and armed groups that chose to stop attacks against Israelis in the wake of the Sharm El Sheikh Summit Conference in 2005 that closed the Second Intifada. There Palestinian leaders pledged an end to armed resistance. It was through this negotiated process that violence against Israelis came to a screeching halt. In this renewed wave, there is no formal leadership. Individuals, often teenagers who are motivated by the humiliating experience of occupation in areas neighboring settlements, are acting haphazardly, alone or with a close cousin. While the wall may be a blunt physical barrier, it can’t be given credit for the ten year lull. Politics did that.
Another lesson is that the wall was always more of a landgrab than a security wall: intended to take as much land as possible in the West Bank with as few Palestinians on that land. That’s one reason folks call it the apartheid wall. “A major aim in planning the route was de facto annexation of part of the West Bank,” B’Tselem writes.
The failure of the wall also demonstrates that separation doesn’t work. The two populations live in geographically-distinct communities by and large but these communities are intermingled– neighborhoods and settlements are right on top of one another. Whatever political solution is worked out in Israel and Palestine ultimately, it will never separate these populations entirely and both populations will have to feel enfranchised under the resulting government(s). It’s a lesson Germany discovered a long time ago: walls that enclose one people and deny them freedom don’t work.
Israelis always point to the wall and say, hey! Attacks dropped by 90% after it was constructed! It must mean it’s working, right? Well, no, not right. This is a topic I have researched extensively.
While the number of attacks inside Israel did indeed decrease since the construction of the wall, this has to do with other factors, rather than the wall itself. The first of these factors has to do with the extensive Israeli military operations that took place in the West Bank since 2002, namely Operation Defensive Shield, and Operation Determined Path. The second factor has to do with intra-Palestinian factors among the different factions, as well as the unilaterally declared Hamas truce. These attacks inside Israel would have dropped during this period regardless of the existence of the barrier.
Even the Shin Bet recognize this, in their report published in 2005 they stated that “The main reason for the sharp decline [of terror attacks] is the truce in the territories”. Hamas finally agreeing to become part of the PA framework kept it busy in the political arena and lead to a significant drop in attacks.
Furthermore, if the wall were truly the source upon which the security of Israel from West Bank attacks depended, then it would not make sense that construction was halted between 2007 and 2012 (around 50% completion), due to what the Israeli government described as “Budgetary Concerns”, with no rise in attacks during that period. If the goal of the wall was truly only to prevent suicide bombings and attacks inside Israel by West Bank Palestinians, then it would make little sense that the final route of the wall includes over 70,000 West Bank Palestinians (no Israeli ID or citizenship) on the Israeli side.
At the time of the large drop in suicide bombings, the wall was not even 25% complete, which raises doubts as to whether the wall was what caused the drop. This skepticism is further reinforced by reports of between 30,000 to 40,000 illegal Palestinian workers who have managed to enter Israel through gaps in the wall. Even according to advocates of the wall, such as Ilan Tsi’on, thousands of illegal Palestinian workers cross the wall on a daily basis. If workers with no military training are able to traverse the wall on a daily basis, I don’t think it would be a difficult challenge for any suicide bomber or infiltrator with other intentions to accomplish. This once again highlights the importance of the intra-Palestinian context and the decision to forego military resistance as an option in the West Bank, rather than the effectiveness of the wall.
I can find no solid stated causal proof that the separation wall was the cause for the drop in suicide attacks inside Israel. At the very best, it could be argued that it “helped” or “contributed” to security, although this remains vague and unclear and is never further elaborated, it also cannot explain the tens of thousands of Palestinians who cross it illegally annually, yet no suicide attacks have taken place for years.
Interesting facts. To hear the bragging, you would think it was a brilliant idea, but most probably, it was yet another attempt to take more lands, and build through Palestinian property.
No wall is going to stop desperate people from fighting for their freedom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601661.html
Chutzpa 101. Of all things, the separation barrier’s main designer, Dan Tirza, is an illegal settler!
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer who has challenged the barrier’s route and confronted Tirza in court several times
” It was Palestinian officials and armed groups that chose to stop attacks against Israelis in the wake of the Sharm El Sheikh Summit Conference in 2005 that closed the Second Intifada.”
This kind of reasoning is silly. First of all, it was the killing of their senior military leaders that led Palestinian armed groups to “choose” to stop attacking Israeli civilians. Second, the Wall made the prospect of continuing to carry out mass terror attacks a much more difficult proposition. Palestinian armed groups certain did not give up “armed resistance” between 2005 and 2015. That’s nonsense. They continued to fire rockets into Israeli population centers. They have just been less successful at killing Israeli civilians during that time.
One would logically expect — setting aside its other injustices momentarily for the sake of discussion — the Wall would reasonably be expected to provide equal security to Palestinians as well as Israelis. (After all, East German VoPos at least stayed on their side of their wall and didn’t enter West Berlin to terrorize its citizens.)
But of course this is manifestly not the case. The JDF and their civilian-police mimics, not to mention illegal settler-thugs, transgress Palestinian territory and violate Palestinian “security” routinely and with impunity.
Security is a two-way street, and when one side is relentlessly deprived of it, the other side has no right to it and must not expect it.