Reworking the Route of the Barrier

In 2003, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, publicly reacting to a string of suicide bombings that had terrorized Israel, ordered construction of a long convoluted barricade that ensured incorporation of the 400,000 Israeli settlers residing behind the Green Line (including East Jerusalem) into Israel. This barricade is known today as the separation barrier or the security fence.

It is ironic that while unilateral disengagement was developed and implemented in 2005, partially in response to the political threat posed by the Geneva Initiative, today, the route of the barrier route is close to the territorial borders of the Geneva proposal. The initial separation barrier plan would have annexed 45% of the West Bank. Today’s current trajectory for the fence would annex a smaller amount than that demanded by Israel in the last permanent status talks in Taba in 2001, closer to that agreed upon in the informal Geneva Accords. Israel negotiated this with itself, losing any advantages it might have gained locally or internationally through an agreement with the Palestinians.

The second Palestinian uprising, and a particularly brutal set of suicide bombings in 2002, led Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government to launch the massive construction project that year. A separation barrier – recommended by a few in the security establishment – satisfied the public demand for a physical separation between the Palestinians and the Israelis in the interim period until permanent status negotiations were to resumed. The proponents of such separation argued that a fence would provide Israel with the desired security, and save the Israeli economy, deteriorating due to the onslaught of terrorist attacks.

For Prime Minister Sharon, this approach had certain logic. It was then Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon’s settlement plan, at the end of the seventies, to build urban and industrial Israeli settlements on back of the mountains and on the western slopes of Samaria, to establish Israeli control over the territories overlooking the sea line, in addition to the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. Thirty years later, the plan turned into reality with a barricade that would incorporate 400,000 Israeli settlers residing behind the Green Line (including East Jerusalem) to Israel.

Given the ongoing violent conflict with the Palestinians following the Camp David and Taba summits, and the lack of a credible political process, few believed the environment ripe for negotiations on permanent status agreement. So the Sharon government calculated that if permanent status negotiations were postponed, it would give up on Gush Katif and northern Samaria and ensure greater Jewish settlement in security zones in the West Bank.

The Road Map, a U.S.-led multiple stage plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the objective of establishing two states for two peoples, intervened. Accepting the inevitable, particularly given the public outcry for greater security and separation, the Israeli government set about laying the lines of the fence in a manner that would ensure maximum Israelis on maximum territory with minimum Palestinians.

The construction of the fence was delegated to the Ministry of Defense. But the Office of the Prime Minister, subject to pressure from settlers, dictated the fence’s route and instructed the MOD to defend it in the name of security. In reality, the demographic or political considerations presented for choosing one route over another were in fact contradictory to the security principles published by the Israeli security establishment itself.

The concept of the barrier to protect and separate populations was widely accepted among Israelis. Questions about its route, however, have been pressed repeatedly. The Supreme Court has found in certain cases, as it did recently, that security concerns are not sufficient to support the particular course of the barrier, and ordered it rerouted.

The Court’s ruling should not surprise. The route of the fence was planned with demographic considerations at the forefront, followed only secondarily by security and political concerns. The Israeli government sought to annex the main Israeli settlement blocks in the West Bank, including those in the heart of Palestinian populated areas. The term “security” was abused to attempt to obtain the approval of the international community and the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice for a winding and twisted barrier that would maximize the annexation to Israeli proper of those portions of occupied territories with heavy Israeli settler population.

The plan to use the fence to immortalize Israel’s control over the western and eastern security zones spreading over 45% of the West Bank failed. The international community, public movements in Israel, human rights organizations, Palestinian groups and the Israeli Supreme Court have reduced this “vision” of annexed territory to less than 8 percent of the West Bank now. The international community feared the original route would jeopardize the prospect of a viable continuous Palestinian state. Israeli movements were concerned about losing the chance for reaching a permanent status agreement in the future, the consequences of which would lead to severe security deterioration. The Supreme Court approved the proposed route initially based on the Government’s assertions about security concerns, but demanded that it harm to Palestinians be considered and minimized, laying the groundwork for subsequent decisions challenging specific sections of barrier construction.

When Kadima, led by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, won the 2006 elections, “convergence” was the platform. Gaza disengagement, the Hamas-led Palestinian government, and a unilateral plan for further separation from the West Bank increased the need to discuss the trajectory of the border. These borders were to be the limits of the Jewish settlement in the West Bank in the short-term and the permanent border of the state of Israel in the long-term, as Foreign Minister Zippi Livni indicated on December 29, 2006.

So where to go from here? Israeli and Palestinian organizations need to continue to press before the courts and public fora to see that the route of the barrier is redirected to follow the Green Line as much as possible, most effectively addressing security concerns. If, as now seems likely, there may be some additional adjustment so that the route may in the end consume about 4 percent of the West Bank, these accommodations should be reached through discussions with Palestinians, which might also involve land swaps. Such discussions should occur under the auspices of a political process with permanent status objectives. If this road for finalizing the route were taken, the international community may also be willing to help absorb some of the political and financial costs of constructing what would become the border, and dismantling settlements.

In this case, the path not taken is still available. We need to find our way back to it.