DEFROSTING

Fences Make Bad Neighbors: Palestinians working on Israeli security barrier wonder, 'What road map?' (Nancy Updike, JULY 18 - 24, 2003, LA Weekly)

It's strange that the peace plan known as the road map, which is a very detailed document, doesn't mention the 90-mile fence/wall that Israel is building right now. This barrier--which is a fence at some points and a wall at others--is not being built on the Green Line (the only internationally recognized border of Israel) but is instead cutting deeply into the West Bank in many places, affecting thousands of acres of Palestinian land in the process.

"Barrier" doesn't quite capture the scope of what's being built. It's a whole barrier system, with successive layers, each of which takes a bit more land. It includes: a motion-sensitive electronic fence (and sometimes a wall); a service road running alongside the fence (on the Palestinian side, but Palestinians will not be able to use this road); a barbed-wire fence; "a trench or other means intended to prevent motor vehicles from crashing into and through the fence" (as the Israel Defense Forces described it in response to a recent, unsuccessful lawsuit to halt construction); three roads on the Israeli side of the fence and another barbed wire fence.

So far, about 24,000 acres of Palestinian land have been cut off from the rest of the West Bank and are now on the western (Israeli) side of the barrier.

What's strange? It's not about peace. It's about establishing a Palestinian state on Israeli terms. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 18, 2003 11:03 AM