This fence is a legitimate response by a sovereign nation, a democratic nation, to protect its citizens. It is clear to me that this fence saves lives,'' U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, said in a speech near the UN today. The court ruling isnot to be accepted by people who understand the legitimate needs of democratic nations to defend themselves.’’
Convenience of Palastinian “freedom-of-movement” over the lives of Israelis? Anyway have at it.
If the fence was to be a legitimate defence, why doesn’t it stick to the accepted Green Line borders, instead of attempting to annex great swaths of new territory?
Bad example. The Israeli wall keeps people out. The Berlin Wall kept people in. It’s like comparing locking the door to your apartment to locking the door of a jail cell.
Exactly. I have no problem with Israel defending itself with a wall all around its territory, and the authorities there seem to have a convincing argument that it actually works. What I take issue with is the fact that it is built entirely within someone else’s territory. This is also the view of the International Court of Justice.
I’m kinda confused about the motivation for this. They have a very good case for building the fence, as you said. Why did they muddy the issue by building the wall on the Palestinians’ land? Is it a land grab? If so, I can’t imagine that the tiny amount of extra land gained could possibly be worth the bother of the additional protests, court rulings, etc.
Is this whole thing being pushed by a very particular segment of Israeli society? The settlers perhaps? Maybe the Orthodox?
The settlers. If you’ll notice, where the wall bulges out and annexes swaths of farmland, water supplies, and the like, it’s so that it can surround some nearly-entirely-isolated settlement, founded on the only water supply for miles, or desirable farmland taken from palestinians, etc. The wall is the perfect example, frankly, of why any palestinian state will be a joke - Israeli settlers have already claimed almost all of the water supply within that area, and much of the arable land, leaving a “state” segmented into tiny little hamlets, surrounded by walls, utterly dependant upon someone else for water and much of their food. To many people watching the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the current layout of the wall seems like an attempt to set in stone the proposed boundaries for a Palestinian state that would deny them access to vital natural resources, and make the settlements permanent.
Every report about Palestinians in regards to the wall say that thousands have lost their livelihood, have their commuting times increased by hours and of course that most of the fertile land on the West Bank now almost irrevocably goes to the Israeli settlers.
It’s possible, even likely, that the wall will stop terrorist attacks. By removing any possibility for a Palestinian terrorist to commit one. Of course, it will also massively increase the sentiment among the Palestinians which leads to terrorist attacks. Of course, since no Israelis will be dying, we can safely go back to ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people.
It’s no surprise Hillary Clinton would take this position for the same reason, I suspect, Chuck Schumer will be right by her side. Important voting blocs in New York are Jewish. It’s that simple. I can’t agree with everyone all the time and this is one of those times that pandering to a constituency will probably lead to bigger problems in the long run. At any rate an Israeli court has ruled that the barrier must be constructed without inflicting excessive hardship on the Palestinians itself. The World Court seems to be taking the next logical step by pointing out the serious flaws here. Of all the judges -only- America demurred from joining the all but unanimous conclusion.
If they built a security barrier along the old green line I don’t think anyone would have a problem but as others have pointed out this is also a very cynical landgrab.
To be fair, you didn’t have west Germans crossing over into Eastern Germany to blow up its citizens.
That’s not really true. It keeps Palestinians in their little territories–that’s the big objection to the thing. To the Palestinians, those refugee camps are a jail cell.
Pity Syria, Jordan and Egypt won’t let them in. Which sort of puts the lie to the notion that the Arab states want a return to pre-1967 borders. They’d rather have a scapegoat.
That’s kind of a bizarre statement. The Palestinians don’t even want to move to the neighbouring arab countries. It’s a bit like saying, “Pity that America won’t let the Israelis emigrate en masse, which sort of puts the lie to the notion that America wants peace with the arabs.” Besides the neighbouring countries do let them in. Jordan alone has a population of nearly two million refugees, which means Palestinians refugees make up nearly 50% of their entire population. Jordan gives all Palestinian refugees citizenship, without question. The other neighbouring countries also host about a million refugees between them.
