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The One-Fence Solution

(New York Times Magazine) Gershom Gorenberg - Col. Dany Tirza is the man in charge of building a barrier, a giant fence along the length of the country that will give physical form to the division between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The fence, Tirza asserts, is not a political measure but a military one; Israel's army remains on both sides of the barrier, and Israeli settlements remain beyond it. Its intention, Tirza says, is to end the ''unbearable ease'' of terror. Less than a mile of open country separates Palestinian Kalkilya from Kfar Sava. Kalkilya was the base for the suicide bombing at the entrance to a Tel Aviv disco in June 2001, in which 21 Israelis died. For much of its length, the barrier will be a 240-foot-wide swath of barbed wire, sensors, and roads, rather than a concrete wall. In either form, it will be a work of monumental proportions, a statement etched upon the land.
2003-08-08 00:00:00
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