April 24, 2002

Nick Denton makes a good

Nick Denton makes a good case for the "build a fence" solution to the Israel/Palestine dispute. Summary:

· withdraw from most of the occupied territories
· annex land around Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem
· abandon settlements beyond the boundary
· forget about regional cooperation
· bar all migrant workers from Palestinian-controlled territory
· build barrier between Israeli and Palestinian territory
· maintains overflight rights
· air force bombs source of any cross-border rocket attacks
· wait two generations

The waiting will be the hardest part...

UPDATE: Jeff Jarvis says, "no wall."

The first problem is Jerusalem. It, just like Berlin, wants to be an international city, a free zone, and that will complicate any plan to build a wall. No one will reasonably be able to keep Muslims from the Temple Mount and Jews from the Wailing Wall and Christians from their holy places. Jerusalem must be free. So if you make Jerusalem an international city, you build a big hole in the wall where bombers masquerading as pilgrims can pass through. You are soon forced to build a wall within the wall. You might as well not build a wall at all.

The second problem is image: The last thing Israel needs right now is to be seen as the wall-builders of our era.

The third problem, is that building a wall just avoids the problem, the real problem: the hate.
Fine, so a wall would make it yet harder for suicide-murderers to wander by a market or a hotel or a bus and trigger terror. But these merchants of hate, these people who will stop at nothing -- even selling their own children into death and murder and hell -- will find new ways to detonate hate. They invented the 737 bomb. They invented the woman bomb. They invented the child bomb. For all we know, they invented new, improved anthrax. A wall will not stop their weapons. A wall will not stop the retaliation. A wall will not stop the killing. A wall will not stop the hate.

Posted by Dr. Frank at April 24, 2002 08:54 AM | TrackBack