Posted on 06/04/2002 4:45:36 PM PDT by Pokey78
IN AN attempt to thwart Palestinian suicide attacks, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, yesterday directed that a 75-mile fence be built to divide Israel from much of the occupied West Bank. The fence will run from Kafr Salem, southeast of Haifa, near the biblical location known as Megiddo or Armageddon, to Kafr Kassem, not far from the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikvah, which was the target of the most recent of 70 suicide attacks in the past 21 months. Construction will take one year and will cost more than £68 million. The fence will follow the so-called Green Line, the unmarked boundary that separates Israel proper from the West Bank, but at some points it will veer east and cut through the West Bank. Palestinians said that 11 Palestinian villages would be left on the Israeli side of the barrier. Mr Sharon’s decision coincided with talks between Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and George Tenet, the CIA Director, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Mr Tenet proposed that Mr Arafat combine his sprawling security empire into only three services rather than the dozen it now has, officials said. Signalling its deepening involvement in the search for Middle East peace, Washington announced that Mr Sharon had been invited to the White House for talks with President Bush next week. President Mubarak of Egypt will meet Mr Bush later this week and press him to back the early creation of a Palestinian state. Mr Mubarak, who is anxious to return to the centre of regional peacemaking efforts, told The New York Times that he was prepared to visit Israel if he were sure that it would help to clinch an agreement. The fence, which Mr Sharon had previously resisted in case it was seen as delineating Israel’s final boundary offer in any negotiations, will be part of a larger series of barriers along the Green Line being prepared by the Defence Ministry and will be patrolled by the Israeli Army and the paramilitary border police. The nature of the fence will vary, depending on assessed degree of risk. In some places it will be heavy concrete, designed to stop any vehicle; in others it will be a wire-and-post construction, backed with electronic sensors. It was proposed by Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Defence Minister, and its main aim will be to protect vulnerable areas of concentrated Jewish population from Palestinian suicide terrorists.
I'm dubious; didn't work for the French. (Yes, circumstances are different, threat is different, but I'm still dubious...)
I doubt that the Israelis will leave their left flank in the air as the French did.
The real difficulty is, after walling off the border with the PA, how does Israel patrol the border between Jordan and Arafatistan?
The border between Egypt and Gaza is already hard to defend.
Thanks for the info.
I confess I'm not thoroughly up on the situation -- but I remember even the Berlin Wall was inadequate against even unfunded determineds, not to mention American prison escapees...
I take it that if Mexicans were once again shooting up the southwest, you would hold that borders should be open?
If you are sane, you would say no. Now apply the logic to Israel.
Put up a minefield and guard towers. This will reduce incursions.
Again, no defense is perfect.
As far as Mexico aggression towards the US, the border should have been sealed in 1916.
Aye, keep in mind though, how many people would've crossed had there been no wall at all. Also, many people died trying to get across the wall. Although these were people tying to gain freedom, for the purposes of argument try to imagine each one who died as a pontential terrorist bent on murder.
A barrier, I think is a logical place to start. Personally, I would also build one around each Palestinian city, town, village- hell maybe around each house... But that's just me.
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