Israel's fence viewed warily

SALEM, Israel -- Giant dump trucks lumber along a freshly hewn dirt road behind the house where Bilan Arifi and his family live in this Israeli Arab village.

Israel is building a barrier separating Israel from the West Bank, a move of potent symbolism and uncertain prospects in the aftermath of the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign.

Arifi, 26, an Israeli Arab, lives and works in Israel as an air-conditioning mechanic. He resides just west of the Green Line that separates Israel and the West Bank. Since the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, the boundary has remained largely unmarked among the stony outcroppings and valleys beyond Arifi's house. But as the fence is built, it will be unmistakable.

The fence is a response to demands from the Israeli public. Most of the suicide bombers have come from the West Bank -- many from Jenin. It also reflects a desire among many Israelis to abandon the search for a negotiated peace and separate themselves from the Palestinians.

"The fence is not meant to replace a peace process," said Yossi Alpher, coeditor of an Israeli-Palestinian Internet newsletter, bitterlemons.org, who advocates building the fence and redeploying Israeli forces out of many West Bank areas. "Let's separate, and tell the other side, wherever it is put does not preclude negotiations."

The idea of separation was broached, broadly, in the early 1990s by the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said Israelis had to end the occupation of another people. More recently, some Labor Party leaders have pushed for it.

But the notion of a permanent wall has also inspired anger, doubt and bewilderment among Arabs and Jews, albeit for different reasons.

'I lose everything'

Arifi, surveying the trucks and tractors, nodded with resignation toward Jenin and a scattering of Palestinian villages on the other side of the boundary. "I lose everything, not just the land, but my family," he said. Members of his extended clan live on both sides of the line, and often travel back and forth.

"Wait one month," he said. "It will be two countries. It's very bad, but there is nothing we can do."

The project has also provoked fears of isolation among the West Bank's Jewish settlers that the fence could become a permanent border, leaving them cut off from Israel.

The fence will resemble those constructed on Israel's border with Jordan, including barriers of coiled barbed wire, trenches and electronic sensors to detect intruders, as well as a road for military patrols. The Israeli government has estimated the cost at about $1 million a mile.

The fence will run close to Umm el-Fahm, a large Israeli Arab city in the north with a history of political turmoil. Hussein Abu Hussein, 49, a lawyer in Umm el-Fahm, said the fence would create more unrest by further isolating Palestinians in the West Bank. "These are our people," he added. "They belong to us, and we belong to them."

"It is not a peace," he said of the barrier. "It is a recipe for continued hostility."

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently approved construction of the first phase of the 70-mile fence along the northern part of the West Bank. A longer, second phase awaits approval.

Sharon has insisted that the barrier is only a security fence in response to the suicide bombings. An Israeli official said Sharon didn't want to build it, but felt he had to respond to public demands for action against the bombers.