I would like to quote a few lines from a difficult story in yesterday morning's Times newspaper about the Security Fence:
TO REACH the baked earth of his mustard field each day, Mohammed Safiqual Biswas must pass coils of barbed wire and armed guards and show his identity card at a security check. The problem is not where Mr Biswas has come from, but where he is going to.... Mr Biswas and his village of 2,000 people will be sealed off from their own country. More than 1,300 miles of the barrier has been erected in the six years since building began.....a 12ft double fence packed with razor wire.
TO REACH the baked earth of his mustard field each day, Mohammed Safiqual Biswas must pass coils of barbed wire and armed guards and show his identity card at a security check. The problem is not where Mr Biswas has come from, but where he is going to.... Mr Biswas and his village of 2,000 people will be sealed off from their own country. More than 1,300 miles of the barrier has been erected in the six years since building began.....a 12ft double fence packed with razor wire.
100,000 citizens live and farm on a 150-yard patch of land hugging the international border known officially as “the zero line”, and they live on the wrong side of the fence’s designated path. Entire villages, including schools... and mosques lie in what will effectively become no man’s land.
Sound familiar? Yet another condemnation of Israel's "apartheid fence"!
Well actually..there's a catch. The Times article isn't about Israel at all! It's about India's construction of a 2,500 mile steel barrier along its border with Bangladesh to keep out terrorists. Indeed, the article continues, while the world’s attention has been focused on the Israeli security barrier sealing off the West Bank, India has been building a far longer fence to keep out Islamic militants.
Bearing in mind the close ties between Israel and India, Israel's officials will not be rushing out to single out India's construction of a barrier to justify the building of their own security fence. Even so, Israel's friends around the world would do well to use the Indian case in order to emphasize that other democracies around the world are doing exactly what Israel is doing to defend their populations.
In the meantime, I look forward to seeing The Guardian, the Independent and the Stop the War Coalition focusing their energies on the Indian Government's security barrier. I may have to wait a very long time.
