Prime Minister Sharon approved in principle today a plan submitted by Public Security Minister Uzi Landau and Police Chief Shlomo Aharonishki to physically separate Jerusalem from neighboring PA areas. The program, strongly endorsed by the police, calls for 54 kilometers of physical obstacles around the city, including 11 kilometers of fences and a wall in the southern areas of the city. The wall would run from Gilo to Har Homa. Other features of the partition include ditches, fences, barriers, and observation points equipped with cameras and night-vision equipment. Five additional Border Guard companies will be enlisted to patrol the various areas, and Arabs would be able to cross from one side of the city to the other only through designated crossing points. Total cost of the project: 150 million shekels. Sharon said he would bring the plan to the Security Cabinet for budgetary approval. The entire government must also approve it before implementation.
Minister Landau himself is in favor only of physical barriers and increased forces around the city, and objects to the construction of any type of wall or fence within Jerusalem-proper. He explained that the purpose of the new program, \"which is part of the larger separation plan decided upon by the government,\" is to \"form a buffer between Jerusalem and the neighboring Arab villages, to isolate the Arabs of Yesha there, and help in the struggle against terrorism and prevent the entry of those who are not supposed to enter…\"
But Landau\'s deputy, Deputy Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra, doesn\'t like the idea. \"There are some people who think this is the solution,\" he told Arutz-7 today, \"but I\'m not one of them. I don\'t think that we can afford all this money and all this manpower to play cops and robbers with the Palestinians. We should concentrate instead on having more deterrence, and preventing free passage for Arab cars between Jerusalem and Yesha... This plan will also take a very long time to get built - longer than I hope the clash with the PA will last… It raises many question marks: What about the passageways that it will have to have - what will be the level of protection there? And what about Fridays when you want to allow freedom of worship to the Moslems?...\"
Asked how, then, Israel is to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem, Ezra answered, \"The way we did it before 1967: Whoever enters a certain prescribed buffer area will be shot. Jerusalem was protected in this way by only one company of soldiers... Minister Ze\'evi was murdered by a gang that obtained two cars with Israeli license plates that traveled freely back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem; there\'s no reason why that should happen.\"
Yisrael Harel, former editor of the Yesha journal Nekudah and former Yesha Council head, objects to the wall on political grounds:
\"[Although its proponents say it will not divide the city, and is only a temporary measure to prevent terrorists], in 1949, too, the walls were only temporary, and were only to demarcate the ceasefire lines, but the fact is that until my comrades and I broke them down in 1967, they were walls in every sense: Snipers fired over them, infiltrators snuck through them, and Jews were killed... In general, I am against these forms of protection; they can always be breached. The idea of a wall means that we are abandoning the offensive tack that we began to take over the past few months, and reverting to defensiveness. It means that our leaders cannot withstand the pressure of those who demand an immediate solution...\"
Minister Landau himself is in favor only of physical barriers and increased forces around the city, and objects to the construction of any type of wall or fence within Jerusalem-proper. He explained that the purpose of the new program, \"which is part of the larger separation plan decided upon by the government,\" is to \"form a buffer between Jerusalem and the neighboring Arab villages, to isolate the Arabs of Yesha there, and help in the struggle against terrorism and prevent the entry of those who are not supposed to enter…\"
But Landau\'s deputy, Deputy Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra, doesn\'t like the idea. \"There are some people who think this is the solution,\" he told Arutz-7 today, \"but I\'m not one of them. I don\'t think that we can afford all this money and all this manpower to play cops and robbers with the Palestinians. We should concentrate instead on having more deterrence, and preventing free passage for Arab cars between Jerusalem and Yesha... This plan will also take a very long time to get built - longer than I hope the clash with the PA will last… It raises many question marks: What about the passageways that it will have to have - what will be the level of protection there? And what about Fridays when you want to allow freedom of worship to the Moslems?...\"
Asked how, then, Israel is to prevent terrorists from entering Jerusalem, Ezra answered, \"The way we did it before 1967: Whoever enters a certain prescribed buffer area will be shot. Jerusalem was protected in this way by only one company of soldiers... Minister Ze\'evi was murdered by a gang that obtained two cars with Israeli license plates that traveled freely back and forth between Ramallah and Jerusalem; there\'s no reason why that should happen.\"
Yisrael Harel, former editor of the Yesha journal Nekudah and former Yesha Council head, objects to the wall on political grounds:
\"[Although its proponents say it will not divide the city, and is only a temporary measure to prevent terrorists], in 1949, too, the walls were only temporary, and were only to demarcate the ceasefire lines, but the fact is that until my comrades and I broke them down in 1967, they were walls in every sense: Snipers fired over them, infiltrators snuck through them, and Jews were killed... In general, I am against these forms of protection; they can always be breached. The idea of a wall means that we are abandoning the offensive tack that we began to take over the past few months, and reverting to defensiveness. It means that our leaders cannot withstand the pressure of those who demand an immediate solution...\"