israel at it again: what right do they have?, page-6

miles for you -unwanted but necessary UNWANTED BUT NECESSARY

Mark Heller

Globe and Mail, February 23, 2004

Like every other obstacle to the free movement of innocent people, the barrier that Israel is constructing beside or in parts of the West Bank is an abomination. And as with every other such obstacle…reasonable people can only regret that it is necessary and hope that it will eventually be relocated or even removed.

This barrier—95 per cent of it is fence; 5 per cent of it, in populated areas, is wall—need not be looked at as permanent. Such barriers have already been relocated or removed in the context of Israel's peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. But the way to make that happen in this case is to eliminate what makes it necessary. And what makes it necessary is not Israel's appetite for territory, but Palestinian terrorism.

More specifically, the barrier is not a way for Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister, to grab land. For a long time, Mr. Sharon led the Israeli resistance to such a barrier… And when he finally caved in under the pressure of public opinion, he approved a route that will encompass only about 16 per cent of the West Bank… Even the most charitable of Mr. Sharon's critics accuse him of harbouring much more expansive territorial ambitions… To make a really coherent argument that the barrier is meant to entrench a land grab, Mr. Sharon's critics need to explain…why the ambition this barrier purportedly embodies falls so far short of the ambition they universally attribute to him.

The barrier is a way to keep Palestinian terrorists out of Israel. True, the overwhelming majority of Palestinians trying to get into Israel are not terrorists. What most of them are looking for is a job or, at worst, a chance for criminal profit. But some have an altogether different agenda: to blow themselves up in a restaurant or on a crowded bus, as one did yesterday in Jerusalem, and kill as many Israelis as they possibly can on their way to everlasting life in the company of 72 virgins. And those few have already done more than enough to convince Israelis that scattered checkpoints and roadblocks will not prevent the suicide bombers from getting through and that only a continuous physical obstacle will protect lives.

Where such a barrier already exists, as around the Gaza Strip, it has proven its effectiveness. Only two suicide bombers have penetrated from the Gaza Strip, both of them British Muslims using their foreign passports to masquerade as tourists. And from the northern part of the West Bank, where the fence has been erected, the number of successful infiltrations has dropped drastically in recent months.

The barrier does impose serious hardship on Palestinians interested only in their personal welfare. Part of this stems simply from Israeli insensitivity, for which the Israeli government should be called to account. But much of it stems from an unavoidable tradeoff between Israeli life and Palestinian quality-of-life which, for most Israelis, is no choice at all. The only way to avoid such a tradeoff is for the Palestinians to abandon a political culture that glorifies martyrdom and incites people to murder.

There is no intrinsic reason why Palestinian determination to do that should depend on a political agreement with Israel. Prior British acceptance of Indian independence was not a condition of Mahatma Gandhi's determination not to use violence in the pursuit of independence; prior American endorsement of civil rights was not a condition of Martin Luther King's determination not to use violence in the pursuit of civil rights; prior Israeli acceptance of the principle, much less the terms, of Palestinian independence was not even a condition of the commitment Yasser Arafat gave to pursue a political settlement only through non-violent means. But if the Palestinians are nevertheless unable or unwilling to stop terrorism without an agreement on terms acceptable to them, then the demand that the International Court of Justice condemn the anti-terrorist barrier only addresses a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

The Palestinian request for an advisory opinion on the barrier…is one more in a seemingly endless string of appeals to international tribunals. This time it is cloaked in legal verbiage and supported by other such paragons of international legality as Syria (still defying a 22-year-old UN Security Council resolution calling for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon), and Morocco (still ignoring at least five Security Council resolutions demanding a referendum in the Western Sahara, which Morocco continues to occupy).

A favourable opinion by the International Court would provide more ammunition for yet another condemnation of Israel in the UN General Assembly, that is, for yet one more small victory in the endless propaganda war that accomplishes nothing except to perpetuate the conflict.

All of this is perfectly consistent with the long-standing Palestinian strategy of trying to mobilize outside pressure on Israel in order to avoid engaging Israel directly, except through the medium of terrorism. This amounts to a strategy of bombing and whining. It hasn't worked for the past 100 years. And while the indulgence of those who presume to speak in the name of the international community may encourage its persistence for another 100 years, it won't work in the future, either.

(Mark Heller, Research Associate at Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, co-authored (with Sari Nusseibeh) 'No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict')