The lack of border fortification makes Israel nearly defenseless against terrorism. The natural result is a large number of terrorist attacks against Israel. Unwilling to block attackers at the border, Israel tries to suppress them by attacking the whole Palestinian populace--a terror tactic which doesn't even work.
When Israeli forces "seal off" a Palestinian town, so that its inhabitants can't get to a hospital and may die as a result, when they cut off water to a town of 100,000 people, that's a brutal substitute for controlling the border. The whole range of Israeli retaliation policies, from demolishing families' houses to assassinations to tank invasions, are cruel and ineffective alternatives to a simple, harmless fence. The fence would require patrolling, like any border, but that would not involve violence against innocent civilians and would not push them into suicidal despair.
A fence is the non-terrorist way to protect Israel from terrorism. If the Israeli government's priorities were to keep Israelis safe and make peace possible, a fence would be the first step. That alone won't resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but it would take a step towards a climate where a resolution could eventually occur.
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Copyright (C) 2002 Richard Stallman
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