West Bank barrier far from a shining example that walls work

In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump used the word “wall” 10 times. The Republican president is involved in a political tug of war with his Democratic opponents, who support security protection but are set against funding a wall. Trump has praised the Israeli-built wall in the occupied West Bank, saying that it “works 99.9 percent of the time,” but the reality is that the Israeli wall was erected more for political reasons than for security. Benjamin Netanyahu, who is running his campaign for a fifth term as prime minister with pictures of him with Trump, knows well that, where it counts, a different solution is needed. Along Israel’s borders both with the Gaza Strip and Syria, the Israeli security establishment has erected electrified see-through fences and not walls.

Israeli construction of the cement wall that sits deep in the West Bank began in 2002 — a year that, according to government statistics, saw a record 55 suicide bombing attacks inside Israel. It is true that attacks did go down slightly in the following years, but Israeli intelligence’s annual figures show a much more considerable drop in attacks for 2005. The independent Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Israeli intelligence as commenting that the “main reason” for the reduction in terrorist acts was the Hamas truce, and the organization’s “focus on the political arena.”

The Israeli army’s Kometz Unit is responsible for all of Israel’s border fences. “We have five fence models, erected according to the area cell and capable of generating an alert in the event of an intrusion into Israeli territory,” Maj. Yakir Sela, an Israeli Defense Forces technology and logistics officer, told Israel Defense magazine last year.

Political scientist Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, stressed in an interview with the Jerusalem Post last month that the West Bank barrier “was built primarily because of popular pressure during the Second Intifada.”

Whether the West Bank wall was built for political or security reasons, it is of course illegal under international law. The UN’s International Court of Justice ruled in July 2004 that it was “illegal,” and that the location of the wall was on “occupied territories.” At the same time, the ruling asserted that Israel has other ways to defend itself.

Trump can use the Israeli example as many times as he wants, but the reality is that, where it counts, i.e., in the Gaza Strip, Israeli security forces have chosen not to use a solid wall, but to deploy various technological and human assets