Failed predictions

[Violet_Crumble]

By Amira Hass

"The planners of the fence failed to predict its effects on innocent Palestinians," National Security Advisor Giora Eiland told a high-level diplomatic-security forum in Germany this week (Haaretz, February 9). Like Eiland, other Israeli representatives are now trying to convince the western countries and the United States in particular that the route of the separation fence is a human, localized and almost chance error that can be corrected to minimize the damage.

We have a new sentry to blame for what has gone wrong: the rather anonymous planners of the separation fence. Some sort of personal, individual limitation caused them to fail and not to predict the extent to which "the lives of innocent people would be affected" by the construction of the fortifications, which has destroyed and is destroying wells that are essential to agriculture, is uprooting tens of thousands of olive trees and other trees and is wiping out hundreds of greenhouses in which thousands of people have invested the savings of years.

One really does need special analytical powers to predict that caging thousands of people behind iron gates and stationing 19-year-old soldiers to open them, if they feel like it, two or three times a day - would have a deleterious affect on studies at schools and universities, sabotage medical treatment for cancer and kidney patients and split up families. After all, only especially creative minds could have guessed that it would be very hard for 260,000 people to maintain "a normal fabric of life" in the 81 enclaves of various sorts that the fence creates. Eighty-one enclaves that separate them from neighboring villages, from the provincial towns and from the rest of the West Bank, shutting them in behind barbed wire fences and guard towers and excavations and double fences and bureaucratic-military systems of permits to go in and out of the enclaves that are needed by garbage collectors and doctors, family members and teachers.

The truth is that what was hard to predict was the international shock at the fence. United States National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is not pleased (and not only the United nations General Assembly) and Western diplomats are saying things in inner conclaves, especially when it turns out that development projects that had been funded by their countries have been destroyed under the fence's bulldozers.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/392912.html

[JasonDeter]

1. More importantly

the hamas, hezbollah and arafat terrorists failed to take into consideration their terrorist acts on innomcent Israeli's and innocent Palestinians. Lets put the blame where it belongs K? Where you ask? Squarely at the doorstep of arafat, hamas and hezbollah. The wall is in reaction to the terror attacks against innocent Israeli's! The world community knows that but afraid to admit it. Thats sad.

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Maybe you could explain something...

If the wall is a reaction to attacks against innocent Israelis and is merely for security purposes, how do you explain the route it's taking, which is after all what the article was about. Does this mean the Israeli govt could feasably construct a wall that only left one or two Palestinian towns on the Palestinian side of the wall, and that would be okay because anyone else but the Israeli govt can be blamed for it?

Seriously, if the wall was being built along the Green Line, I'd have no problem with it, and the international community wouldn't be speaking out against the route it's taking and the incredible hardship it's causing for innocent Palestinians...


Violet...

[JasonDeter]

3. What a great idea!

Put it up for a referendum to the Palestinian people. Pick all the communities on the immediate border and ask the Palestinian people in those communities which side of the wall do they want to be on. My bet is they'd pick the Israeli side because of safety and ability to make a living for their families. arafat, hamas and the hezbollah terrorists are keeping the Palestinians poor and afraid to keep them subservient to the terrorists who steal the money thats supposed to go to the poor Palestinians! How evil they are and yet all the world is concerned with is the wall that Israel uses to keep them safe from the terrorists who terrorize both sides of the wall! Damn, if a person wasn't paying attention those who have made the wall an issue sure could confuse the issue!

[Violet_Crumble]

4. You didn't answer the question I asked...

The reply I just read had zero to do with the post it was replying to, which was about the ROUTE of the barrier. Seeing as how you've divvied it up into the Israeli side and the Palestinian side, do you think that the parts of the West Bank that will end up on the western side of the barrier are in fact part of Israel?

Also, the problem is that the current route of the barrier doesn't appear to have anything to do with keeping anyone safe from terrorism, but much more to do with grabbing land. Seeing as how a large number of Palestinians will find themselves on the western side of the barrier, and there seems to be some school of thought that all Palestinians are potential suicide-bombers, how can a barrier built inside the West Bank be keeping anyone safe from terrorists? Also, the wall around Gaza hasn't kept residents of Gaza safe from being attacked and killed by the IDF, and some of the actions of the IDF are acts of terrorism....


Violet....