Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
President on effectiveness of walls: ‘Just ask Israel’
WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump vows to build a “big, beautiful wall” on the U.S. border with Mexico, he apparently doesn’t have the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall in China in mind.
“Do walls work?” Trump said Wednesday. “Just ask Israel about walls . ... Just ask Israel.”
With frequency, Trump appears to be borrowing from Israel’s security manual — including its construction of what Israel calls a security barrier along Israel’s border with the West Bank.
Palestinians call it an apartheid wall that in many cases divides Palestinian villages.
Trump has suggested other controversial tactics that Israel has embraced in its effort to curtail terrorism. During the presidential campaign, Trump spoke of “going after” the families of terrorists and demolishing their homes.
Israel has routinely destroyed the homes of Palestinian suicide bombers or other violent individuals, and often jailed their relatives.
Trump has made a point of declaring war on radical Islam, mincing no words in using the religious label. Ditto for Israel.
But the most concrete policy alignment is his proposed wall along the long border with Mexico.
“The wall is getting designed right now,” Trump told a conference of police chiefs Wednesday in Washington. “And it will be a real wall.”
On Tuesday, the new secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly, told Congress that construction of the wall could take two years and cost billions of dollars. Fences and walls already line about 600 miles of the border.
Trump has insisted that Mexico would pay for the wall, and Mexico has repeatedly said it won’t. That tiff led Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to cancel a planned visit to Washington last month to meet with Trump.
On Wednesday, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray called on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Kelly in hopes of improving relations.
Videgaray said he and Tillerson would launch a series of meetings and that Tillerson will visit Mexico City in coming weeks.
Trump’s invocation of Israel’s counterterrorist policies has sparked growing concern by security experts and human rights groups.
A report this month by the Republican leadership of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security praised Israel’s security efforts in glowing terms.
The report, “Securing Israel: Lessons Learned from a Nation Under Constant Threat of Attack,” credits Israel’s extensive building of fences and walls along its internal and external borders for a decline in terrorist attacks.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has welcomed Trump’s election and recently announced the construction of more than 5,000 units in Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, arrives in Washington next week. He will meet with Trump on Wednesday.