July 13, 2004
The Fence... Let's take five with Moira Gunn. This is "Five Minutes."
I can't stop thinking about that fence. You know the one. The one the Israelis are building to contain the Palestinians and with it, attempt to halt the suicide bombings. You see, the whole situation got me thinking about fences.
Fences are a simple piece of technology. What's never simple is "why" we build them.
I spent my first ten years of life on the East Coast, where you could look down through all the neighbors yards. Even if there was a fence, you could pretty much see through it or get around it. It was to keep a dog in or kids out. I vaguely remember talk about "spite fences" - high, view-blocking fences which were considered just plain unneighborly.
Then we moved to California. And the suburbs. High fences were the norm, and you never saw what your neighbors were doing. Heck, you never knew your neighbors. I learned early that fences are great if the people in both sides are in agreement.
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Go down through history and fences - or walls - play out again and again.
There's the Great Wall of China, which even today looms large by any standard. There's the Berlin Wall, pieces of which are hard to find now. One small section I viewed seemed remarkably thin for being so high, some 12 feet by my accounting. And there are the walls of every prison that has ever been built.
But all fences or walls or barricades project their power in relation to humans. And so it is with this new Israeli fence. One photo which has been popular with the wire services in the last few days shows a person standing next to it. There's no way to convince yourself it's a designer wall, intended to give a sense of safety or privacy. It's a punishing wall, on average 25 feet tall although it falls to 18 feet in places.
Go outside and mark that height on a building. Imagine a wall going each direction from the place you are standing. Or consider another popular photo which shows a little village mostly encircled with the fence. It isn't hard to figure that the village, with its squat buildings, is a very different place today.
It's all about scale, proximity, humans and their dwellings. It's about containment and fear and safety.
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I was reluctant to write this commentary. For one thing, the question of the Israeli fence has not yet played out. Thus far, they've built some 120 miles of a planned 400-plus miles of electronic fence, concrete walls and guarded passthroughs. The International Court of Justice, the high court of the United Nations, has ruled that portions of the Israeli fence already built violate humanitarian law while Israel has decided independently to re-route some of the fences, citing hardship on the Palestinians. No doubt, this will all play out on the world stage - and rightly so.
While weapons of mass destruction are almost existential in nature, in that we can only imagine their potential traumatic consequences, it's really quite easy to understand the emotional impact of a wall. There's something visceral and unrelenting, which isn't present in a natural barrier, like a mountain or a canyon or a river.
I have no opinion on the fence. I feel for both sides. And I have no solutions. But take a minute and imagine that wall. Can't you feel it?
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
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