World Powers Play Erector Set With Border Fences

Everybody loves fences. The indecisive can sit on them, the remorseful can mend them, and the envious can use them to navigate to the greenest grass. These days though, the biggest fans of these perennially popular partitions are...pugnacious politicians, who are throwing them up on the borders between Mexico and the US, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, China and North Korea, India and Kashmir, and perhaps most controversially, that fence springing up on the "border" between Israel and Greater Palestine.

Another Fence Goes Up in Israel/Palestine

Pundits take various stances on the justifications and outcomes of security fences, as they are called. United Press International surveys history to find that the Great Wall of China was basically effective, which should give pause to critics of the US-Mexico Fence. I pause. Their article concludes rather astutely, with reference to the proposed 700 mile fence on the border, that “the current legislation does not appear to be designed to solve current problems so much as to alleviate them. It appears to be a measure designed to buy time. But time is often the most precious commodity any political measure can buy.”

Time in office seems to be the biggest concern on many politicians’ minds though, and so we must nod to the predictable deluge of criticism of this fence and many others. The Tuscon Citizen, who ought to know, calls the fence "political theatre." This certainly seems to be backed up by the numbers, which suggest that the completed fence will cost far more than congress is willing to spend: from 2.2 to over 4 billion. That spent so far? 67 million. Boeing got the contract.

Privilege: The Real Fence

Over there in the friendly Middle East, the issue is foggier. The series of "fences," as the Israeli Goverment prefers to call them as to deflect criticism that they define future borders, do seem to have greatly reduced attacks. Even the French Foriegn Minister has done an about-face on the fence, stating that he has "significantly evolved on the matter of the separation fence. Although the wall was a moral and ethical problem for me, when I realised terror attacks were reduced by 80 percent in the areas where the wall was erected, I understood I didn't have the right to think that way," said Douste-Blazy.

The criticisms of the fence focus on political rather than security effects, however. The leftist Israeli blogger falsedichotomies published his experience attending a rowdy protest against a relatively new section of the fence at Bil'in. "The lands of Bil’in have been taken in order to expand the settlement of Upper Modi’in Illit, rather than to increase security. This settlement currently has 35,000 residents. According to the Ministry of Housing, by 2020 it is intended to hold 150,000 people."

Most critics point to similar instances. The most outragous from the critics' point of view is the fence that seperates 'occupied' East Jerusalem from the West Bank and from the rest of Jerusalem. East Jerusalem is seen by many Palistinians as a future capital.

The newest scar across the bloodied back of the Middle East is Saudi Arabia's fence along their border with Iraq. According to UPI once again, "the Saudis have invested a third of a billion dollars in building a 550-mile fence to try and cut off Iraq from their own country." (I thought it would be fun to link to UPI via the goofy 'Spacewar.com' military news site. Go ahead, just clink n' chuckle).

The Saudi Solution

The London Daily Telegraph reported on its Web site that the new Saudi security barrier "will be equipped with ultraviolet night-vision cameras, buried sensor cables and thousands of miles of barbed wire (and) will snake across the vast and remote desert frontier between the countries." And this as Bush desperately tried to dampen fears about losing Iraq after the declassified parts of the new National Intelligence Estimate in Iraq concluded with
RAND-type certainty that the war is lost and serves to recruit and inspire legions of terrorists.

As the smug liberal blogger with one hand around a mug of fair trade, now comes the time for me to offer my opinion. Security fences around the world will resist serving the only end they possibly can, namely buying time in ultimately political problems, as pointed out by the UBI analysis. This is because there is simply too much short term political gain to be had with them: land grabs, 'get tough' posturing on immigration and national security, stem the tide of refugees, and as in the case of Israel, define the terms for future negociations. This is not to say that they are unacceptable in all circumstances--owing to the chaos in Iraq, Saudi Arabia's fence seems not all together unreasonable. But in the large majority of cases, the only things the fences seem to seperate us from is the hard political solutions-including trade adjustment, global wealth redistrubution, and territory sacrifice-these problems require.


A fence between Israel and the West Bank