This HaAretz article documents how the majority of Israelis are convinced that “The Big Fence” is the way to go.
And according to this article, it will happen, in one form or another.
The Palestinians would get an area of land, de facto for use as “a state” … Israel would get relative security. Once there, then both sides can work on other issues of mutual benefit.
The problem with this solution is that the PLO will just change tactics from using suicide bombers to using rockets. This is what is happening on the border with Lebanon where there is a wall. Rockets would be an improvement on the current situation because they are more expensive and less accurate, but I don’t see how the Israelis could stand having rockets fired on them for long and then the situation falls back into the terrorism- raid, terrorism- raid, pattern that is currently taking place.
Can we say, “Berlin Wall?”
That sucks.
Berlin Wall? What are you talking about Guin?
As for puddly boy, the Leb border, ex-Chabaa’ farms area has actually been largely quiet. Hezbollah has apparently allowed some rocket lobbing outside of that immediate area in the past month, but it was shut down when menacing noises started. Hezbollah has much nastier things in its arsenal, like Stalin’s Organs which could hit deeper and do more damage than the wiener mortars and rockets used to date, even in the Chabaa’ region. Insofar as the PLO has been committed to a 1967 border solution in large part, if the Big Wall did not engage in annexations beyond 1967, then they would not likely be the problem. The folks who want no settlement at all would be the problem.
That and the issue of how to settle Jerusalam.
Stalin’s Organs:
A song by GWAR.
A WWII weapon, known formally as the Katyusha: a multiple rocket launcher that could shoot 36 barrels and would fit on the back of a truck.
More recently version: the Russian BM21, a multi-barrelled rocket-launchers.
Guin, Could you explain how you think “The Berlin Wall” is an apt analogy? I mean other than that they would both be walls.
It would be a lousy long term solution, but a reasonable unilateral short term one. Long term, Palestinian economics would be much better off for integration with Israeli co-investments and job opportunities, and Israel would benefit from the labor pool. Both economies would benefit, in a time of peace, from a tourism industry that has access to the entire area. The Wall would be an expensive bridging device, but, as I’ve said before, from the Israeli point of view, nothing else is worth talking about until Israel has security that it can rely on. With separation perhaps the potential benefits of shared economies would help motivate discussions to a more final settlement that gives each side enough of what it wants.
The Wall would not be perfect; it would be a deterrent, an obstacle. And the most likely way it would play out would NOT include a unilateral withdrawl to behind “the seam” but a partial withdrawl with Jerusulam and a few border area settlements behind it. Barak’s version proposed an 85% withdrawl with the remainder to be open for negotiations later. Another version proposes a similar percentage but with some annexation and with forced evacuation of most settlements, yet another says let the settlements reside outside the wall and talk about them later.
Tell me Guin, what are the options? As covered in a past thread (“A Constructive Israel Thread?”) continuing with the status quo is continuing with an occupation that few want and that results in hopelessness for Palestinians and terror for Israelis. Just giving the West Bank Arabs whatever they want is no guarentee of Israeli security, and if those who desire Israel’s destruction continued terrorist activities and the PA was uninterested or unable to stop them, then the IDF would be in an even worse to try to prevent it. From the Israeli POV, good faith negotiating was tried and Arafat didn’t want to deal even when offered much more than anyone ever expected to see on the table. Whatever your take on the right or wrong, it is clear that a long term negotiated settlement isn’t going to happen anytime soon and that the current situation is untenebale for all. All doable options are flawed, but The Wall is the least bad of the bunch. IMHO.
It is the first step in what I have long seen as an inevitable conclusion. Think of the terrorism as a crime wave. This does not imply that the entire Palestinian population are criminals, rather just to compare the current wave of terrorists with an urban criminals (let’s say armed robbers for an analogy). Look at the proposed solutions.
Extreme left: total Israeli withdrawal with recompensation. Analogy: take the locks off of your doors and go in and educate and pay the criminals not to rob you. Assumes that the criminals will turn around in their ways immediately and start rebuilding their own neighborhoods.
Extreme right: total Arab expulsion. Analogy: ship all of the poor (violent or not) somewhere where you never think about them.
Middle right proposal: Demilitarization of the territories. Analogy: conduct aggressive police raids in the neighborhoods producing the violent criminals.
Middle left proposal: Build a fence. Analogy: Conduct better defense by increasing police patrols in the good neighborhoods and get security systems and better locks on your houses.
Introduces some level of “civic pride” to the criminals.
Obviously 1 and 2 are patently ridiculous. 3 and 4 would never work by themselves. Option 3 is what Israel has basically done for the past year and a bit. Time to play offense and defense and secure your “home.” The vast majority of bombers come from the West Bank, because the borders are porous. Far fewer come from Gaza, which can be locked down tight.
The long term solution IMHO is to improve the standing of both sides. Something like option 1. But option 1 is not a short term solution. You have to get people calmed down before rational plans for the future are made. A wall is worth a try, at least in conjunction with guarantees of increased Palestinian security vigilance or if this caves (again), limited operations in the territories. It can easily be seen by both sides as a first step to true two-state coexistence, even if nobody has to say so.
If a wall doesn’t work, negotiations never occur, the situation never calmss, Israelis never feel secure, and the Palestinians stay militant, then the situation truly turns into Kashmir. The situation festers and doesn’t heal. Each side plays a waiting game of attrition until something pushes one side over the edge into a hot war. India and Pakistan have been playing around 50 years, and maybe only total war with millions of casualties can put a close on the situation.
It could happen in Israel. Picture a wall going up, picture limited withdrawal of settlements with no final negotiations on Jerusalem. Picture increasingly militarized, fort-like settlements remaining with fanatical occupants who won’t leave under any condition. Picture an Israeli society on edge by continual suicide bombings or terrorism. One day, someone kills 1000 Israelis – let’s say dirty bomb or poison gas or bioterrorism. What does Israel do? If PFLP or PIJ or Hamas or Hizbullah takes credit, Israel will wipe them off the face of the planet. And, PFLP, PIJ, and Hamas have been offered cabinet posts in the PA – they may one day be legitimate organs of Palestinian government. So Israel has to wipe the PA off the face of the planet. Next step, regional or perhaps even not-so-regional war.
Many people assume that there is a peacefull solution to this problem, like all it will take is yet another negotiation.
Not to be a pessimist, but I do not think that things in the middle east will EVER settle down, barring the elimination of one side or the other. (Which I do not believe can happen, realistically)
Building a wall will work, in the sort term. In the long term, I can not see any non-catastrophic solution working perfectly.
The wall idea will only work if the key problem is that there is too much “mixing” of the population (even if this is the problem it is still a bad idea). However, that is not the problem and it is a very stupid idea (I mean come on! A fence. :rolleyes:) I am sure it will fail in all expectations, and will only aid in polarizing both populations.
efrem,
And of course security regarding borders and who comes into America with what will only help if the problem is too much mixing. :rolleyes:
The problem really is that an independent Palestine is unlikely to make it economically. Nation building is hard and expensive work. They wouldn’t have an educated base and don’t have a lot of resources. A successful independent Palestine would require partnership with Israel. The hope is that once they have their own place that they’d realize that and that such would motivate real negotiated settlements, getting past the fixation on 94 vs 100% of the land and whether control of the Temple Mount is wholly Arab and the nonstarter of the Right to Return and into thoughts about what they need to be a successful country economically and educationally. More focused on assurances of coinvestments, freedom to compete for jobs within Israel, the details of how to share tax revenues for workers residing in Palestine but working in Israel, infrastructure support, etc. My fear is that there will be continued poverty and that Israsel will continue to be used as the straw man.
efrem,
And of course security regarding borders and who comes into America with what will only help if the problem is too much mixing. :rolleyes:
The problem really is that an independent Palestine is unlikely to make it economically. Nation building is hard and expensive work. They wouldn’t have an educated base and don’t have a lot of resources. A successful independent Palestine would require partnership with Israel. The hope is that once they have their own place that they’d realize that and that such would motivate real negotiated settlements, getting past the fixation on 94 vs 100% of the land and whether control of the Temple Mount is wholly Arab and the nonstarter of the Right to Return and into thoughts about what they need to be a successful country economically and educationally. More focused on assurances of coinvestments, freedom to compete for jobs within Israel, the details of how to share tax revenues for workers residing in Palestine but working in Israel, infrastructure support, etc. My fear is that there will be continued poverty and that Israel will continue to be used as the straw man.
Are you saying big fence around America is the answer? This idea sounds silly.
There is a big fence around our southern border isn’t there?
Maybe it wouldn’t sound so silly if Mexican terrorists were blowing up nightclubs, pizzerias, and buses in L.A. and Houston on a daily basis? Just a thought…
Some people above have already said reasons why I would disagree with a “Big Fence”, so I won’t bother cluttering this post up.
Just a quick hijack… didn’t Pat Buchanan suggest building a big wall between the US and Mexico? I believe its purpose was to keep out illegal immigrants. I laughed when I heard about it… the picture of the Great Wall of China starting in southern Texas down to California…
Option 1 is only ridiculous due to the way you’re presenting it. Compensation isn’t supposed to go to the criminals, but to people who have been wrongdoed. And there are unlikely to be the same ones. The guy whose property has been confiscated is likely to be rather old, while the suicide bomber is likely rather young. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and the fact Israelis have been victims of terrorism doesn’t make illegitimate the claims of people who have been previously vctimized.
In case you wouldn’t guess, I’m a firm supporter of this solution : indemnize people whose property has been stolen (or who have been otherwise victimized) without right of return within Israel’s frontiers (not because they have no good reason to ask for this right of return, but because pragmatically it wouldn’t make the situation any better), withdrawal from all occupied territories (with a somewhat more complicated solution for Jerusalem…but i’m not going to explain my opinion in detail) and evacuation of the settlements (because once again because it’s a pragmatical solution).
A fence could indeed be a good idea, at least at the beginning.
efrem, it may sound silly but there effectively is a big fence. The US does a lot to keep its borders secure and is trying to do more.
It just makes me wonder how much of this is about actual “security” opposed to just piece of mind for the average Israeli. The people are scared, so the government ups “security”. In the adding “security” it makes it look like the government is doing something, which thus in turn deflects people’s attention from any other real solution to some of the serious problems that Israel faces.
Israel is the most “secure” country in the world, but it still seems that it’s citizens are still not “secure” and are in fact more frightened then ever. Which leads me to believe more “security” will not cure the problem of Suicide Bombers or terrorism. This fence idea seems like an exercise in appeasement instead of tackling any real solutions for safety of its citizens.
My fear would dictate for more “security”, but my common sence would tell me that it is not the answer.
puddleglum wrote:
So you feel that even if Israel were to give up the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, and put walls between those areas and what remains of Israel – even then, the PLO would still conduct attacks against Israel?
(Admittedly, the last time an Appeasement policy was pursued, it didn’t stop anything either…)