Don’t Fence Me In
November 9th, 2006The notion of sitting on the fence has always been an unattractive one to me, but on Wednesday, that is the position I nearly found myself in, both literally and metaphorically. Readers may have gleaned from these pages that I don’t much like the Security Fence. I don’t like it at all. It’s not a solution. It’s not even a sticking plaster. It is the equivalent of rubbing salt into a wound. And yet…
The reasons for its creation are entirely understandable and can be summed up in one word - security. The number of suicide bombings has decreased rapidly. However, the price being paid is very heavy indeed. The integrated society of Israel, where Palestinians would enter and work in Tel Aviv and other cities, has disappeared. The second Intifada and the continuing suicide threats have made many Israelis believe that they must lead lives separate from the Palestinians. The fence means much inconvenience and real hardship to ordinary Palestinians. It is a symbol of the weakness of both sides, rather than of their strength.
We visited the fence at Kalkilya, where Israeli and Palestinan settlements lie interspersed and in such a way that the fence extends out into the West Bank like an admonitory finger. The young men and women of the Israeli Defence Force are working hard to police the fence and to exercise restraint and good judgement when dealing with local people, but this does not remove the fundamental concerns that exist about the fence.
Walls and fences of this nature are never a good thing. Whatever the intentions of those who build them, they usually come to represent something wholly different. The Berlin Wall that was built to keep the West at bay was really a prison wall keeping the people of the East inside. The “peace walls” of Belfast were symbols of a dysfunctional community, rather than a means of healing the divisions. So it is proving with the fence. And yet… Israeli people deserve to be secure, but it could eventually be the case that the structures of this early part of the century become the impenetrable walls of years to come, having the effect of keeping the Israelis prisoner just as much as the Palestinians.
November 9th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
I bet you didn’t tell your wife that you were going to the West Bank - you’d better come home safe( with a nice present for her from Duty Free)
November 12th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Look in the downstairs loo
November 14th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Oh, Mud to go with my bathsalts. I can hardly contain my excitement