Good Fences Make Good Neighbours?

In 2013, Israeli labourers were put to work repairing the security fence that separates Gaza from Israel. A sniper killed one of the workmen and Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza at a number of Hamas sites and where the sniper shot the fence repairman from. Hamas issued a statement condemning Israeli 'aggression'. This is the security fence necessitated by countless suicide bombing incursions from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel that left 900 Israelis dead in the last several decades, young and old, wounding many more.

Israeli army soldiers carry a labourer shot near the Israel and Gaza border to a helicopter.

 

The Israeli workman who was shot dead that day was a civilian contractor who worked for the Israeli Defense Ministry. The day previous, an Israeli police officer had been stabbed and wounded at a West Bank junction. And a few days on, a bomb exploded on a bus in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv. Minutes before, passengers were warned to exit the bus, a quick appraisal that worked to prevent casualties. 

 

Israel responds ... A Palestinian inspects a Hamas training camp after it was hit by an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

There was a wholesale reduction of Palestinian terrorist incursions from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel after the controversial security fence was built. In a sense, the fence, while protecting Israelis and saving countless lives, gave impetus to the slander of Israel as an 'Apartheid State'. The usual Palestinian contortion of reality, where no Jews are permitted to live in the West Bank governed by the Palestinian Authority, while 20 percent of the Israeli population is comprised of Israeli-Palestinians with full citizenship.

The fence has, since its building, fallen into disrepair with gaps and breakages occurring here and there. Upkeep to the fence is ongoing. Recent deadly incursions into Israel by Palestinian terrorists resulted within a two-week span of attacks, in 14 Israelis being killed, knifed or shot to death, as well as vehicular homicide. This led to damaged areas of the fence having to be repaired once again to restore its integrity as a deterrent to deadly violence.

View of a hole in the the security fence, near Mevo Horon, March 30, 2022.

(photo credit: YOSSI ALONI/FLASH90)

Where, on the occasion of the murder of five Israelis by a 29-year-old Palestinian from Jenin, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was heard to condemn the violence, calling for a "permanent, comprehensive and just peace", he and his Fatah party have never stopped inciting Palestinians to violence against Jews. From primary school curricula up to high school and through social media the PA, Fatah and Hamas glorify martyrdom, teaching Palestinian children to view Jews as the enemy.

The only 'permanent, comprehensive and just peace' that the PA's Abbas will countenance in reality is to see Israel defeated in conflict, and the country and its Jewish inhabitants disappear, to enable Palestinians to claim the entire geography as their own, 'from the river to the sea'. More recently, during the confluence of Passover, Easter and Ramadan, violence has once again flared up at the Temple Mount over which the Noble Sanctuary of Islam was built, with the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque.

The Temple Mount, the most sacred place in Judaism where the two Temples of Solomon sat, the second ruined by the Romans during their occupation of Judea, has been ruled off limits to Jewish worshippers to satisfy the monopoly claimed by the Jordanian Islamic Waqf authority to whom Israel signed over authority with the peace agreement it signed with Jordan. Mahmoud Abbas has railed against 'filthy Jewish feet' soiling the Noble Sanctuary when Jews have appeared on the Temple Mount.

During this Passover week, Israelis were given permission by the Israeli government to approach the Temple Mount, while Israeli Palestinians who call it the Noble Sanctuary prayed at the Al Aqsa mosque. Palestinians assaulted Orthodox Jews and they rained rocks down on Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall to pray. The Palestinians gathered rocks, placing them within the mosque, and lobbed them along with incendiary devices at Israeli security.

Attempts to restore peace and security saw hundreds of rioting Palestinians injured. Smoke bombs and tear gas was used, as well as truncheons wielded by the Israeli Security. Hundreds of rioters were arrested. The Arab Muslim world reacted, insisting on cautious moderation in response to the riots where, if they were themselves faced with the savagery of violent riots, would have used more forceful means to disperse and arrest the rioters.

Avishai Yehezkel, one of the victims, was buried in Bnei Brak   Reuters

The recent murders of Israelis by Palestinians, outwardly condemned by the PA's president, rings hollow on many fronts, not the least of which is that the Bnei Brak attack that killed five Israelis was carried out by a Fatah militant, earning praise from senior Fatah members who are part of the West Bank governing party. Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza as well as Fatah, celebrated the murders, handing out sweets and adding incendiary threats for further deadly attacks. 

These are the neighbours that the international community, the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, the UN Security Council, the Arab League -- whose member states never allowed Palestinians to settle in their own countries as citizens -- all insist that Israel must negotiate for a peace accord with. A neighbour against whose malevolence and thirst for the murder of Jews necessitated a security fence. 

In Israel's case, good fences did not make for good neighbours.