Security Barrier: Defense or Offense?

"Israeli Court Orders Revision of West Bank Barrier Route"
A14, Tuesday 12/16/08
By Isabel Kershner

This article discusses an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that has ordered the Israeli military to re-route a mile-stretch of the West Bank security barrier that has cut off the “Palestinian village of Bilin from much of its farmland.” According to the court, the barrier’s construction was not based solely on security needs, requiring a revision that would appropriate less private Palestinian land.

Quickly though, the discussion delves into the rightness of barrier. On the one hand, “The Israeli security establishment insists that the barrier was built to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel, and that its route was dictated by security needs.” On the other hand though, “much of the barrier runs inside the West Bank, looping around some Jewish settlements that lie outside the 1967 boundary, and the Palestinians have accused Israel of a land grab.”

Can the NYT really continue to question that the barrier was built for defensive purposes given the circumstances surrounding its construction at the height of the orchestrated terror campaign known as the Second Intifada? Additionally, the NYT uncritically swallows Palestinian accusations of an Israel ‘land grab’ without mentioning that the security barrier encompasses less than ten percent of the West Bank and does not annex any territories.

It is clear that the NYT (like many others) cannot countenance Israel building a defensive barrier on anything but the 1949 Armistice Lines (the “1967 borders” as they term it). According to their selective interpretation of international law, while ignoring UN Security Council Resolution 242, all settlements are illegal and cannot be validated by any sort of barrier being built to protect them.

This NYT position must be understood in order to better comprehend its simplistic framing of a complex and nuanced subject.