The Wailing Wall?
A fence that would make the West Bank safe for Israel to leave, argues David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is a fence that would be built roughly along the outline President Clinton offered Palestinians and Israelis — which called upon Israel to turn over 95 percent of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in return for peace with the Palestinians. Since 75 percent of the settlers live on 5 percent of the West Bank — just across the Green Line from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — the majority could be included inside the fence, said Mr. Makovsky in the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, and the Palestinians could still have a contiguous state in almost the entire West Bank.

"It's time we started putting facts on the ground that disentangle this spaghetti and counter the facts on the ground designed to entangle and prevent any solution," argues Mr. Makovsky.

If the wall were along the lines of the Clinton plan, it would signal Palestinians that a deal is there for the taking — and could be further adjusted in peace talks — while providing Israelis security and signaling the settlers beyond the wall that they have no future.

If the wall heads way off the Green Line, deep into the West Bank, as Mr. Sharon hinted it might, we are headed for a disaster.

Good fences make good neighbors, but only if your fence runs along a logical, fair, consensual boundary — not through the middle of your neighbor's backyard. If this wall is used to unilaterally bite off chunks of the West Bank to absorb far-flung Israeli settlements, then "it will just become a new and longer Wailing Wall," said the Israeli political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "But unlike the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, this wall will have people wailing on both sides. Jews will be mourning the collapse of their dream of a Jewish democratic state, and Palestinians will be mourning their own lost opportunity to translate all their sacrifices into a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/opinion/07FRIE.html