Tear down this wall,” called out President Ronald Reagan in June 1987 on a visit to Berlin. And two and half years later the Berlin Wall came down. There is another wall, whose construction is not yet complete, which has been built over the past 10 years. It runs the length of the Land of Israel, like a scar along the face of a beautiful woman – the separation fence. When will it come down?
This monstrosity, which has cost billions, will certainly not stand there forever to be dug up by puzzled archeologists a thousand years from now. The time has come to tear down that wall.
The decision to build the separation fence was taken by the government led by Ariel Sharon in April 2002. It was a moment of panic, a time of hysteria. Hundreds of Israelis — men, women, and children — had been killed in the previous two years by Palestinian suicide bombers who entered Israel’s cities, but Sharon refused to react, proclaiming over and over again that “restraint was strength."
The security services at the time insisted that the only way to stop the carnage was to build a fence that would separate the bulk of the Palestinian population from Israel’s population centers. An increasingly vocal public campaign, insisting that not building the wall was costing the lives of Israeli civilians, brought the Sharon government to its knees. It decided to build a security barrier.
The barrier is a severe imposition on the Palestinians. Farmers are separated from their lands, the movement of those who live within the area cut off by the barrier has become restrictive. Life for the Palestinian population has become more difficult. Can this be justified? Is it reasonable to continue construction of the barrier? Has the time not come to pull it down?
