Considerations

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.)

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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

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