Kadima’s recent "victory" (meaning barely 25% of seats, the largest bloc in the deeply fractious Knesset) combined with the discussion of 1990s crime perception in the US in Freakonomics, has reminded me of one of my most uncomfortable political agreements with the right-wing in Israel: the need for a wall.
Back in 1995, I took a graduate seminar entitled "Arab-Israeli Conflict" taught by a visiting professor, Aharon Klieman.
One of our assignments was to create our own "final settlement," a
picture of how each of us thought peace could be achieved. At the time,
I was very much influenced by research that the public’s perception of
crime often has no relation to the actual crime rate (still am).
Sometimes, the crime rate goes down while the public thinks it’s going
up, and vice versa. Freakonomics reminded me of this phenomenon in the
1990s.
[Actually, this is broader than just crime. Fear is a matter of
perception, hence why we think, for example, that loaded guns in the
home are more dangerous to children than a swimming pool, when the
reverse is actually true. I stole this from Freakonomics, btw.]
Anyway, one of my core beliefs is that the propensity for violence
on the part of both sides against the other would take decades to
disappear. So would the reciprocal fear of being a victim of the
other’s violence, for that matter. Economics, a better life, would
eliminate the actual violence over time, but to combat the fear–the
perception of imminent violence stoked by the persistent rhetoric of
extremists on both sides–would take more more drastic measures to
mitigate.
To address that, I believed (and still believe) that a wall must be
built along the entire border between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. I
remember when I proposed this in class, everyone was aghast, from the
ardent "Greater Israel" military expansionists to the stateless
"push-them-into-the-sea" Palestinian nationalists. When I added a
raised, four-lane highway with no exits other than one in Gaza and one
in the West Bank (we’re talking a 30-mile road, btw), it became horror,
whether it was because Israelis wouldn’t have any control over who went
on this road, because Palestinians would be locked on this tunnel-like
bridge, or something else. (This was intented to solve the problem of
territorial contiguity, which is really just transportational
contiguity.)
When I insisted that both of these measures would do almost nothing
to prevent violence, but was just to deal with Israeli fear of violence
(and, to a lesser extent, Palestinian fear of the same), the horror
changed to disgust.
Six or sever years later, when Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s most
hawkish elected officials, began building that wall, I was horrified. I
agree with Sharon?
Well, I don’t actually. One of the key tenets of my wall is the
complete evacuation of all Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip that are not directly on the borders (i.e., no Palestinian lives
in between the settlment and the border). And wall crossings have to
be…
No, let me start over: border walls are inneffective by definition.
Did The Great Wall stop the Mongols? Did Hadrian’s Wall stop the Celts?
No.
Walls are about public relations, and Sharon thinks this one is
about military defense. Oh, perhaps he sees the PR aspects as well, but
Kadima has never seen the wall as an opportunity. If the wall becomes a
symbol of equality (Israelis don’t cross without Palestinian permission
and vice-versa), if the Wall stands as both the physical and figurative
end of the Israeli occupation, Palestinians might embrace it. If it is
a symbol of Palestinian powerlessness, however, it will simply
incentivize Palestinian extremists to find a way across. And they will
find a way.
Moreover, not only must the wall be equal for crossing, it must also
be equal as a border. If Israel can annex settlments directly along the
Green Line (no Palestinians can live in between), then Israeli Arab
communities along the border should have the right to vote themselves
out of Israel and into Palestine. This must extend to borders with
Jordan and Egypt: Israeli influence must stop at the wall’s edge.
Israel can not control border crossings between Palestine and
neighboring Arab countries.
Peace is made between enemies, but an unequal peace, like the
"peace" of 1918 (that David Fromkin called "the peace to end all
peace"), can not persist. The vanquished must be able to retain their
dignity. Kadima’s wall does the reverse.
The real estate agent part of Freakonomics stood out from the rest as not setting up its logic properly in what was otherwise a good book. Real estate agents have to get more clients to continue their income stream and the chapter didn’t talk about how that affects their incentives. Also, sellers often have goals other than maximizing their sale price – like they need money to buy another house by a certain date.