I hope this is what the southern U.S. border wall looks like with guards on top.

Tuesday, June 07 2016

Haggai Matar
Published April 9, 2012
The Wall, 10 years on: The great Israeli Project

It might be the biggest, most expensive and most influential construction project in Israel’s history. To mark the 10th anniversary of its inception, I will be publishing in coming days a series of stories about the separation wall and its history, arguments in favor and against its construction, its effects and side effects and an analysis of its possible implications on regional politics in years to come.

Chapter one – the Israeli story of the wall.

The Wall: 10 years:

On April 14, 2002 then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that a separation fence would be built in the West Bank (a matter of terminology: The barrier is part fence, part wall. I will be using the two terms interchangeably). It was the height of the second intifada, which started with mass demonstrations that were murderously repressed by the IDF, and continued with a series of deadly suicide attacks against citizens inside Israel. After the 2002 attack on a Passover dinner in a Netanya hotel, Israel launched operation Defensive Shield, during which some 500 Palestinians were killed, and mass destruction caused to houses and infrastructure across the West Bank. At that point, no planned route or budget existed for Sharon’s fence, announced during the operation. But the project, which was to become probably the largest in Israeli history, was born.

The entire route of the wall – between 680-709 kilometers

kommonsentsjane