I’ve always been in favor of the security barrier; and now that it’s supposed to be trimmed to cause less hardship for Palestinians along the route, I’m in favor of it that much more.
But I get so depressed when I see this thing — and from the Israeli side yet, which is the side the wall is meant to serve.
I drove the length of the Trans-Israel Highway a couple of times recently, when the heavy rains made the countryside a vivid shade of green, and every now and then my view was interrupted by a winding barrier of raw gray concrete separating Israel from the West Bank.
I said to myself: Is this really the best we can do? Is this what it means for the Jews to come back to their ancient homeland and build themselves a state — that we have to deface the land with these high, thick fortifications just to stay alive?
Even though the wall is mostly the Palestinians’ fault — they didn’t have to start the intifada, after all — if the only way we can live on this land is behind these hideous stretches of concrete, is it worth it?
Well, who knows, maybe things will change. Let’s think about something else.
I haven’t had the pleasure yet of seeing the nine-yard-high wall running through Abu Dis, the Palestinian village just outside Jerusalem, although I’ve gotten the point from the reams of news photographs showing how it dwarfs the Palestinian woman in the headscarf or the man in the keffiyeh passing by.
But in the Gush Katif settlements of Gaza, I saw something worse: the wall that separates the industrial zone in the settlement of Neve Dekalim from Khan Yunis refugee camp.
This is truly a gray monster, something out of a nightmare. It rises up much higher than nine yards, just row after row of concrete stands, stacked one on top of the other.
Bunker mentality?
But as I said, I’m in favor of the barrier (although in Gush Katif I prefer evacuation, which would make the golem hovering over Neve Dekalim and Khan Yunis unnecessary). It’s a vital component of unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, which, in the absence of Palestinian leaders that can control terror, is the only way I see out of the intifada and the occupation.
And I don’t see why the world, along with the Israeli Left, is so stricken, so beside itself over the wall — which is mainly an elaborate fence — that cuts through Palestinian land.
Not that it’s nice for so many Palestinians to have their mobility — and in some cases, access to their land — curtailed so harshly.
But for three years the Palestinians have been “encircled” inside their villages and cities by Israeli army patrols, and by massive dirt “berms” that cars can’t pass, so they’ve had to sneak through fields or play on army officers’ sympathies in order to come and go.
If they manage to get out of their hometown, they’ve got army checkpoints and more patrols to get through. And when curfew is on, they can’t even come out of their houses except for the hour or so granted them for shopping.
Nearly 3,000 dead, God knows how many thousands wounded, rampant malnutrition, a society in shambles — what are the difficulties caused by the wall compared to all that?
And if you look at the problem that the wall was built to address — the terror that has killed over 900 Israelis, wounded more than 6,000 and darkened the spirit of this country — what is there to discuss? Should there be any doubt that the sharp fall-off in successful terror attacks during the last six months or so is due, at least in substantial part, to the wall?
Sure, I wish it ran along the Green Line and didn’t jut into the West Bank. But with the exception of its loop around the settlement of Ariel, it runs very close to the Green Line, and anyway encompasses territory that Israel would want to keep — even in return for some pre-1967 Israeli territory — in a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
But beyond the factual case for or against the wall, it has become a symbol — in the eyes of the world and the hard line Israeli Left — for this country’s futile bunker mentality, for its illusion that it can keep the Palestinians at bay by building higher and thicker walls — by being hard and closed when Israelis can only save themselves by being flexible and open.
This is exactly the symbolic meaning given to the high, thick walls that went up around the houses in white Johannesburg after the black rebellion in South Africa began in 1985. As the world saw it, the whites were putting up walls — not to mention electrified fences and barbed wire — against the force of liberation, and it was futile.
It sure was. The problem, though, is that apartheid came down 10 years ago, but the walls surrounding the homes of white South Africans are still there — not to keep out black liberation, but to keep out impoverished, violent black burglars. Incidentally, South African blacks that have moved into middle-class neighborhoods since the end of apartheid have put up walls, electrified fences and barbed wire, too.
Over in America, more and more bourgeois neighborhoods are becoming “gated communities” to keep the desperate from breaking in. Meanwhile, the U.S. continually fortifies its border with Mexico for the same purpose.
Maybe it will turn out that Israel’s wall is there not only because we can’t solve our security problem with the Palestinians, but also because we are a middle-class society rubbing up against a poor one.
That’s a much more deeply-rooted problem than even the intifada or the occupation. If that’s what’s happening here in our ancient homeland, then we might as well stay, because sooner or later the walls will be going up everywhere.
Larry Derfner writes about Israeli society for U.S. Jewish newspapers and the Jerusalem Post.
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