Jerusalem fence a failure

Separation fence route could have dire consequence for capital’s future

Amos Gil, YNET

The defense minister declared last week that he was freezing construction work on the separation fence in the Judean desert. Earlier, in the framework of the 2007 budget discussions, the Treasury proposed to cut or freeze the fence construction altogether.

This declaration sounds strange in the face of the fence’s mythical reputation as the top means for preventing any security threat from the east. And still, the proposal, which amounts to denial of the Israeli security establishment’s holy of holies, went without a response.

This lack of response attests to what is clear already: The separation fence, and particularly its yet-to-be-built parts, mostly in Jerusalem are not and never were premised on security needs. They were built to achieve wholly different objectives:

In order to stress the “undivided” city’s municipal borders, annex more West Bank territory to Jerusalem in practice, and while doing this trying to change the demographic balance in the city in favor of the Jewish side.

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[A better answer was suggested by Caroline Glick in Israel: Olmert’s plan for Jerusalem]