Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Recent news by Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, for an Israeli Palestinian peace plan got me thinking. It seems to me that every day Hamas and other Palestinian hoodlums kill innocent Israelis. Imagine all this in the name of peace.

On the Jewish New Year it was reported that Jews were killed in Israel as they celebrated their holiday meal. Sadly an innocent baby girl was shot to death.  Arafat’s people took the credit and claim that the killings were done in the name of bringing peace.  This they say will continue as long they feel necessary.

Upon hearing that Sharon continues speaking to Palestinian leaders about making peace, makes me wonder if he is in touch with reality.  He will not allow anything to stop the peace talks.  It seems that he has no great concern that the acts by Hamas are becoming more daring and brutal.  I wonder why doesn’t he see that Arafat will not allow peace to happen?

Sharon’s dream of peace has become the Israeli nation’s nightmare.

Recently, Israel has embarked on a new solution for the troubled conflict.  They began to build a safety fence, now being called “separation fence”. Their aim is to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of Israel.  By doing so Israel would have secure borders and its people would be safe.  Sharon wants the Israelis and Palestinians to keep on talking peace even though they are at war.  The new fence would help protect the settlements, but world opinion doesn’t buy that. They condemn the separation fence.

Sharon ought to take heed and realize that no fence will bring peace nor can any negotiation with Arafat help. Whatever Sharon does he will be condemned by the P.L.O. or the U.N. We need to remember that as long as the P.L.O. has Arafat as its leader all peace talks are doomed.

In a special report on behalf of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, by John Dugard, a South African Law Professor, it was reported that:

“The time has come to condemn the wall as an unlawful act of annexation in the same way that Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights has been condemned.”   Israel claims that the “separation fence,” due to extend for miles, will seal the boundary with the West Bank. It will keep suicide bombers out. However the Palestinians consider the barrier a “new Berlin Wall” aimed at keeping the Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

The United States has stated that it had put off a decision on how much it will deduct from loan guarantees to Israel to show its displeasure with Israel’s work on the “separation fence” and Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.  This action is puzzling to me.

Take a look at the policy towards Mexico and the illegal immigration problem.  It’s been reported that there were over one million illegal immigrants apprehended by the U.S. border patrol.  So what does the government do?  They build a separation fence to keep the people out.  It costs over a million dollars per mile to put a second fence between San Diego County and Tijuana, Mexico.  The reason for the fence is to control people from entering the U.S.   This project will destroy the landscape, plus a natural habitat for rare and endangered species and the relationship between countries.  Yet our government doesn’t care. 

The poor people that cross into our country are hungry and look for work in a free country.  They don’t come to destroy or bomb our country. Nor do they claim that parts of California belong to the Mexican immigrants.  Mexicans with their families have lived in California for hundreds of years.  They would travel to the south and back to a land now called Mexico.  Suddenly they were told of quotas and the need of citizenship.

American “Operation Gatekeeper” keeps on adding border patrol and today thousands of miles are protected by gates, barbed wire, dogs, guards, and border patrol. All this happening in the name of freedom.  Why the double standard?  Why can’t Israel have a separating fence to insure their freedom and safety? 

I know it’s more important to save lives by keeping a country safe than to keep poor Mexicans out of the U.S. for business reasons. We can build as many fences as needed while Israel can’t, and if they do, they will be punished!  How incongruent things are.  I may not agree with Sharon negotiating for peace under the blackmail of terrorism but, on the other hand, I think the fence is a life saving idea. The fence will bring security and not peace, we ought to call a security fence.

It may do us well to remember the saying coined by the great Robert Frost, found in the writings, Mending Wall.

“My Apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.  He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”