David Makovsky has just completed a monograph for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in which he analyzes the fence as it is actually being constructed. He’s found that the fence is generally following the route Bill Clinton had proposed as a possible border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. Makovsky counted the populations of all the villages and settlements on each side of the fence. He found that "fewer than 13,000 Palestinians — that is, less than 1 percent of the West Bank total — will actually be stranded on the Israeli side of the barrier." About 54,000 Israeli settlers, a quarter of the settler population, will be on the Palestinian side.
In other words, the fence leaves 99 percent of the West Bank Palestinians on a contiguous 87.5 percent chunk of West Bank land. That is a reasonably fair provisional border, which the two sides can modify if they ever get around to cooperating. The Israelis initially planned a much more intrusive fence. But skillful diplomacy by Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Elliot Abrams and other U.S. officials led to modifications. For example, the Israelis initially wanted to build a series of secondary fences that would have enclosed Palestinians. One of those deeper fences would have encircled 65,000 Arabs just east of the Tel Aviv airport. The U.S. prevailed on Israel to abandon those plans. |