Myths and facts about Israel's anti-terrorist barrier

Terrorism in almost every Israeli city has “disrupted” Israeli life. The fence is not the inevitable result of Israeli policy, but the inevitable result of Palestinian actions which have targeted, killed, injured and traumatised Israeli civilians and others.

You cannot argue the effects of the fence without recognising that it was built to safeguard Israeli lives, Jewish and Arab. The fence is a last-resort measure which Israel reluctantly began building to protect all its citizens against continued Palestinian terror, terror that doesn’t discriminate between religion and nationality.

When talking about human rights, we must keep in mind more than 1,100 Israeli citizens murdered by Palestinian terrorists since September 2000. Thousands more have been injured and maimed. The terrorists infiltrated Israeli cities and towns mostly from Palestinian areas in the West Bank, sometimes within walking distance. Terror attacks - often suicide bombings - perpetrated on buses, in restaurants, shopping centres and even private homes. The Palestinian leadership does nothing to stop the terror, they even encourage it. No other democracy in the world had before this time faced such intense and sustained attacks against it.

Unfortunately, even with the rejuvenation of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Palestinian incitement to terror and its horrific results remain the real obstacles to peace. The Palestinian people continue to be exposed to images of violence and incitement by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas-controlled media; school children are still learning from official textbooks that advocate for the annihilation of Israel and go to summer camps to train for future suicide bombings.

Clearly, if the terror stopped, support in Israel for the barrier would quickly reduce and public opinion would shift from a consensus for the fence to a demand for its deconstruction.

An end to violence could mean the end of the fence. There would have to be a long-term cessation in violence, not just a tactical pause, for Israel to stop building the fence. With a comprehensive peace agreement, the fence could be dismantled. The reality is a long way off but if it is achievable, it certainly gives great hope for the futures of Israelis and Palestinians.

Israel’s security fence creates some inconvenience, and temporary hardships to some Palestinians but it also saves the lives of Israeli civilians, Arab and Jewish, which otherwise would have been destroyed by unjustifiable terror. Inconvenience can be reversed; death cannot.