The new walls of Jerusalem: Part 1 • The Arabs on the outside
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"Olmert must give Kadima some substance and distinguish himself. Otherwise, this party will simply fall apart," says Shlomo Aronson, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "Sharon, and, later on, Olmert, had a certain agenda: unilateral disengagement, including from parts of the West Bank, and the completion of the separation fence is part of that."
But for most Israelis, argues Professor Aronson, currently a guest professor at the University of Arizona at Tucson, the bottom line is that the fence works. "The main point is that, wherever the fence is erected, there are no suicide bombings anymore. If we forget the macro part of the picture, we lose sight of reality."
Some Israelis, posits Ms. Yanai, are closing their eyes to a reality that is changing rapidly.
"The terms of Jerusalem have been altered radically, and it doesn't bode well for future negotiations," says Yanai, an American-Israeli lawyer.
"It's such a starkly unilateral act – to the Palestinian street, but also on a policy level. This is a huge shift in the status quo, and that has a major impact on 'my negotiating power' versus 'your negotiating power,' " she explains.
"I think it's possible to say there's also a shift in anger and frustration and despair.... And if you start to make people's lives miserable and impact their economic stability, you start to perhaps undermine the stake people have in maintaining that relatively stable security situation."
As for Shawara, she is still hoping for a marriage ticket out of Nuaman.
But leaving, her mother says, is a mistake: it would mean abandoning their land to Israel, and that, she says, is what Israel wants. At the same time, there isn't much left here for them: "Life was a little better a year ago," says Fatma Shawara. "Now, it's unbearable."
Israelis call it a "security fence." Palestinians call it an "apartheid wall." Call it what you like, Israeli officials say, but the barrier has been a effective means of warding off suicide bombings.
"The fence is a success story and the fence is saving lives. In areas where the fence has gone up, there has been something like a 90-percent success rate in stopping suicide penetration," says Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. "In 2006, we've had fewer successful suicide bombings than we had in one week in 2002. That's in large part because of the fence."
In response to new information indicating that the barrier's route was motivated by the demographic struggle that is one of the underpinnings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Regev says that it is natural that the mappers of the barrier took Israel's concerns about a rising Arab population into consideration. "The government's positioning of the fence does take into account demographic realities, topographical realities, and security concerns," Regev says. "The object of the fence is to have as many Israeli citizens as possible protected by the fence."
Regardless of the route, he adds, Israel is bound to be the subject of criticism here.
"If this were a land grab, then we should have included all of Shuafat in the area of the fence," he says. "Look at Jerusalem. If we put areas of East Jerusalem inside the fence, we're accused of annexing Jerusalem. But if we leave them out, we're cutting off Palestinians from their brothers on the other side of the fence. I think the arguments about the route tend to be disingenuous."
"The route can be changed, and one day when there's peace, the fence will come down," Regev says. "This is the fence that is designed to keep suicide bombers out. We have an obligation to let people pass through it and that's why there are gates in the fence."
The Israeli government calls the barrier a fence, he says, because more than 90 percent of the route from north to south is made of fencing. The difficulties it causes, he says, pale in comparison with its success.
"We understand that there has been a negative impact on the quality of life, and it's our obligation to do everything we can to minimize that negative impact," he says. "But we're talking about a quality of life issue, while on my side of the fence, it's a life and death issue."
