Road Map – to Destruction?
According to media reports, the United States has drawn clear guidelines for Israeli retaliation that essentially bar Israel from expelling Arafat or besieging his Ramallah headquarters. This “road map” is an outline for a peace process based on Pres. George W. Bush’s June 24th Middle East speech.
Located just inside Israel’s pre-1967 Green Line border in the so-called West Bank, Kibbutz Metzer was among Israel’s last fortresses of faith in Arab-Jewish cooperation and reconciliation – the hope that its children and those of its neighbors would live in true peace. Metzer has long been known for vigorous advocacy of reconciliation with its Arab neighbors and support for a future peace, including an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.
The kibbutz had led a public battle very recently to shift the route of the Defense Ministry’s planned security fence [read “wall”], so that it would neither harm their [Arab] neighbor’s olive trees nor keep them from tending them.
Many saw the delay of erecting the security fence as a direct risk, especially in areas used as crossing points by Palestinian terrorists.
THEN the children of the kibbutz became a target for terrorists. Gunmen with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah slid under a fence meant to shield the kibbutz and entering a nearby house, shot point blank two children sleeping in their beds, killing their mother and another woman walking nearby. Then trading fire with the secretary of the kibbutz, the village’s most senior official, they shot and killed him.
With a fruitless manhunt underway Metzer residents were forbidden from leaving their homes.
A kibbutz official took strong exception to the proposed “Seam Line” security fence that might demarcate a border in future Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Wrong Turn
Incidents like the above shows the “Road Map” takes a wrong turn, and there is bound to be a traffic ticket. The U.S. must quit pressuring Israel to respond to the “road map” to hand over frozen funds to Arafat and the PA. Prime Minister Sharon has frozen his response to the road map because of reservations by his new Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and his new Foreign minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, a draft response to the road map, prepared by the IDF Planning Department was shelved.
As we go to press, dialogue in part between the U.S. and Israel will deal in details of a possible Israeli response in case it is attacked by Iraq. -
DEFENSIVE WALLS
(Excerpts from the Near East Report article by David Dobin)
With the Palestinian Authority having failed to put an end to terrorism, Israel is taking matters into its own hands by constructing a system of security fences to prevent terrorists from crossing into Israel.
In response to nearly seventy suicide bombings and daily terrorist attacks against its civilians, Israel’s unity government is moving ahead with its plan to construct a security fence near the northern part of the 1967 Green Line between Israel and the West Bank to prevent Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating into Israeli population centers.
Officials also have begun constructing a fence to protect Jerusalem and at a later stage, the rest of the West Bank will be fenced off as well.
Recent government disclosures that there are not enough soldiers to patrol the Seam Line, which separates Israel from the West Bank, also explain the necessity of building the fence rapidly.
Construction on the fence began last summer with the hope of completing the first stage of the barrier within a year.
With most of the suicide bombers emanating from the Palestinian towns marked above, Israel is building a security barrier to impede such attacks. – Near East Report
The security fence system is expected to run nearly 200 miles along the 1967 line.
As part of the “Jerusalem Defense Plan” building also has begun around three parts of the capital city which has been the most frequent target of suicide bombers. When it is completed within the next few months, the length of this section of the fence will run about thirty miles around the municipal boundaries of the city.
The fence will be enhanced with high-tech equipment to prevent infiltration into Israel… a multi-layered scheme of security for the fences will include underground and long-range sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles, trenches, landmines and guard paths. All would be used to prevent terrorists from infiltrating into Israel. In addition, manned checkpoints will constitute the only way to travel back and forth through the fence. -