Considerations

Politics, business, religion, and culture by Samuel J. Scott and Jeff Guevin

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Solving the Middle East, Part III: Settlements and the Separation Barrier

March 27th, 2007 · 16 Comments · Civil Liberties, Islam, Israel, Palestine, Politics, Religion, Solving the Middle East, The Middle East

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The Israeli-West Bank separation barrier

Third in a series

The sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier that the Israeli gov­ern­ment has built between Israel proper and the West Bank is dif­fi­cult to address because of moral, prac­ti­cal and polit­i­cal con­cerns. But before I tackle this sub­ject, I need to men­tion the use of language.

Words in and of them­selves have con­no­ta­tions that extend beyond their demon­stra­tive def­i­n­i­tions. (A demon­stra­tive def­i­n­i­tion is the neu­tral def­i­n­i­tion of a word that one would find in a dic­tio­nary. A word’s con­no­ta­tion is the emo­tional reac­tion that peo­ple attach to that word.) Pro­po­nents of the sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier will call the struc­ture a “fence” while oppo­nents deem it a “wall.” Obvi­ously, the lat­ter term is more neg­a­tive than the former.

So, why do I use the term “sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier”? I believe that, in a jour­nal­is­tic con­text, this phrase is the most accu­rate and appro­pri­ate. I’ve never seen the bar­rier per­son­ally, but I have viewed it through tele­vi­sion news pro­grams, pic­tures and doc­u­men­taries. In some places, the bar­rier is indeed a wall — a solid struc­ture made of con­crete or other sim­i­lar mate­r­ial. In other loca­tions, it is a fence — noth­ing more than lay­ers of barbed wire. So it would be inac­cu­rate to use either “wall” or “fence” to describe the bar­rier as a whole. A “sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier,” on the other hand, can refer to either a wall or a fence, and it occu­pies the most neu­tral space between “wall” and “fence.” I imag­ine these rea­sons are why most neu­tral news orga­ni­za­tions, like I do in this post, use “sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier” in their reports. (If any­one can sug­gest a term that is more accu­rate and neu­tral, I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing your thoughts.)

At first, I sup­ported the instil­la­tion of the sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier whole­heart­edly. Fol­low­ing the sec­ond Pales­tin­ian intifada, I believed that a wall was the only plau­si­ble method to pre­vent sui­cide bombers from killing Israelis. Although I hated the idea of putting a wall between peo­ples, I knew that the Mid­dle East oper­ates under a dif­fer­ent set of rules than the West. (Thomas Fried­man calls them “Beirut Rules.”) It’s hard to be an ide­al­ist when you’re dead.

So far, the bar­rier seems to have been effec­tive. Accord­ing to Israeli sta­tis­tics, the num­ber of attacks from the West Bank have fallen to close to zero. Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants there have also admit­ted that it is more dif­fi­cult to attack Israelis. (See here for sources.) The case in sup­port of the bar­rier seems cut-and-dry.

Or does it? Just because one event fol­lows another does not mean that the sec­ond event was caused by the first. Cor­re­la­tion does not always imply cau­sa­tion. There are other vari­ables, like the cease-fire agree­ment in Decem­ber 2005. Since Yasser Arafat died in 2004 and Hamas gained a major­ity in the Pales­tin­ian Authority’s par­lia­ment in 2006, the Pales­tini­ans have been more inter­ested in fight­ing each other — Fatah ver­sus Hamas – than Israel. It’s rea­son­able to say the bar­rier has pre­vented some attacks, but it’s impos­si­ble to know exactly how many. You can’t prove a negative.

So, Israel has gained some secu­rity — but at the expense of Pales­tini­ans’ qual­ity of life. The exam­ples — restric­tions on travel, humil­i­at­ing searches at check­points and land con­fis­ca­tion, among oth­ers — are well-documented and numer­ous. (See here.) These actions only enrage Pales­tini­ans and make peace that much harder to reach.

And here is the crux of the issue: If the sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier fol­lowed the path of the Green Line exactly, then I would still sup­port it whole­heart­edly. (It would be a nec­es­sary secu­rity mea­sure until the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity can make peace and police its own peo­ple.) But the wall is being con­structed much fur­ther into the West Bank — most likely to annex future Pales­tin­ian land that cur­rently con­tains Israeli set­tle­ments. If Israel’s only motive was to pro­tect its cit­i­zens in Israel proper, then the gov­ern­ment would have con­structed the wall along the Green Line. But the devi­a­tion reveals this sec­ond motive.

The present path of the sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier — and not the struc­ture in and of itself — dam­ages Israel’s nego­ti­at­ing abil­ity. The actions of the government’s right and left hands are con­tra­dict­ing each other: The right hand sup­ports a future Pales­tin­ian state in the West Bank while the left hand is build­ing more set­tle­ments there. This is hyp­o­crit­i­cal, and it causes Israel to seem as though it is nego­ti­at­ing in bad faith. If Israel wants to build a wall and set bor­ders uni­lat­er­ally while the Pales­tini­ans sort out their many issues (see the first post in this series), then the coun­try should set its bor­der as the Green Line sep­a­rat­ing Israel and the West Bank.

Israel needs to:

  • Imme­di­ately stop build­ing any new set­tle­ments in the West Bank;

  • Inform cur­rent set­tlers that they (and their set­tle­ments) will be under Pales­tin­ian juris­dic­tion and con­trol once that state is formed;

  • Offer to relo­cate exist­ing set­tlers from the West Bank to Israel proper at the expense of the Israeli gov­ern­ment before a Pales­tin­ian state is declared;

  • Move all parts of the sep­a­ra­tion bar­rier so that it fol­lows the Green Line; and

  • With­draw com­pletely from the West Bank at a mutu­ally agreed-upon time with the incom­ing gov­ern­ment of the future State of Palestine.

The entire series: Part VI: Israel and Syria; Part V: The Right of Return; Part IV: The Pales­tini­ans Need a Viable State; Part II: Israel Needs Elec­toral Reform; Part I: Fix the Pales­tin­ian Authority

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Related posts:

  1. Solv­ing the Mid­dle East, Part V: The Right of Return
  2. Solv­ing the Mid­dle East, Part IV: The Pales­tini­ans Need a Viable State
  3. Yes, Move the Sep­a­ra­tion Barrier
  4. Solv­ing the Mid­dle East, Part I: Fix the Pales­tin­ian Authority
  5. Solv­ing the Mid­dle East, Part VI: Israel and Syria

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16 Comments so far ↓

  • lior ben moshe

    i agree with every point you have stip­u­lated for actions to be taken,but unfor­tu­nately one major prob­lem still exsists with reth­draw­ing such west bank jews from these settlements.the major prob­lem lies with these right wing fanat­ics is that this land belongs to the chil­dren of david.the last time land con­ces­tions were even talked about Iscaak Rabeen was assis­nated at prac­ti­cally point blank range by 1(which can only mean the obvious).to these peo­ple giv­ing away a piece of aritz israel is blasfmy.its very well to stip­u­late what needs to happen,but as you stated in your sec­ond synopsis,these peo­ple do take up a large piece of the polit­i­cal spectrum,how ever much a minority.yet in a coun­try where it is so dif­fi­cult for 1 polit­i­cal party to gain an un equiv­able major­ity how can any party take up a stance with out jepor­dis­ing their seats.now natru­aly its most log­i­cal to feel the need to just inform these set­tlers that they will fall under pales­tin­ian juras­tric­tion if they choose to remain behind,but how can the israeli gov­er­ment just leave these peo­ple behind if and when a pales­tin­ian state is formed.at pre­sant these set­tlers are pro­tected by the israeli defense force.the army is sim­il­ta­ne­ously pro­tect­ing arabs from the extrem­ist set­tler mob­bings as well.if israel would with­draw from the west bank i can assure you that many of these set­tlers would choose to stay,as well per­form revolts and poten­tialy vio­lent protests move­ments may arrise from such descisions.as well as that the hatred that has been build­ing from west bank ten­sions would most defi­natly spill blood with out the army there to pre­vent such an anslaught.now i for 1 am fully pro the two state solution.but how do we pre­vent such an out come.which could poten­tially only worsten israeli pales­tin­ian relations.it seems to me that the most ten­son causers hap­pen to be from the smaller extr­mist groups on both sides of the fence.how do we dis­al­low a few bad grapes from rot­ting the bunch.i per­son­aly can’t seem to find the solu­tion ..per­haps you may have an idea…  

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  • Samuel J. Scott

    Lior,

    Your point about the zealotry of the set­tlers is very valid. I fear what would hap­pen to Israeli lead­ers, like Yitzak Rabin, if the coun­try were to leave the West Bank. My response, at this point, is to say that Israel would need to have elec­toral reform first (see my sec­ond post in the series) in order to min­i­mize the elec­toral power of the extrem­ists. Then the gov­ern­ment would need to increase secu­rity mea­sures to pro­tect against reprisals. Over time, the threats from zealots would decrease. (I’ll dis­cuss ways to min­i­mize extrem­ism in Israel and among the Pales­tini­ans in a future post.)

    If I were the Israeli gov­ern­ment, I would not mind leav­ing the set­tlers behind because the set­tlers them­selves made the choice to live there. They made the choice, so they would have to endure the con­squences if they choose to remain.

    I was not aware that the IDF cur­rently pro­tects Pales­tini­ans from extrem­ist set­tlers. I find that to be very encouraging.

    I’ll post more thoughts as I con­tinue this series.  

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  • Jeff

    I’m sure the IDF isn’t doing it for the sake of the Pales­tini­ans so much…  

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  • Samuel J. Scott

    Jeff,

    I’m not sure what your point is: That the IDF pro­tects Pales­tini­ans for rea­sons other than their own sakes? Or that the IDF doesn’t really actively pro­tect them in the first place?  

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  • Jeff

    My point is that I think there are prob­a­bly motives other than Pales­tin­ian wel­fare for the IDF’s “pro­tec­tion” of Pales­tini­ans from nutty set­tlers — such as the vio­lence and bad press that could ensue from a set­tler attack on Pales­tini­ans. Remem­ber Hebron? It is also in the IDF’s inter­est to pre­vent vig­i­lan­tism for the same rea­sons it is in any “police” force’s inter­est.  

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  • Samuel J. Scott

    Regard­less of the IDF’s inten­tions, the end result is still pos­i­tive: The Pales­tini­ans are pro­tected from extrem­ist set­tlers. And the Mid­dle East seems to be a place where ends are more impor­tant than means — but that’s a ran­dom philo­soph­i­cal note.  

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  • Jeff

    No argu­ment here that the result is pos­i­tive, but I don’t agree that it’s “encour­ag­ing,” as you stated.  

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  • Samuel J. Scott

    Well, the fact that fewer Pales­tini­ans will be attacked by set­tlers (because of the IDF pres­ence) means that less con­flict will occur in gen­eral. In a sense, that’s encour­ag­ing.  

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  • Lese

    I’m curi­ous what your take is on our cur­rent day events, and how you feel about set­tle­ments (namely, Ms Clinton’s sug­ges­tion of far less or none of them) and what the Obama admin­is­tra­tion seeks to accom­plish.  

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