Despite the sense of regret that new families have joined the circle of the bereaved, this has not been enough to make the Israeli public renounce its practice of feigning surprise at breaches in the security fence. The holes in the fence have been around for a long time. Israeli commanders and soldiers are familiar with the holes in the fence, which have received media coverage.
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In a country where the air is filled with the scent of security summits, it is amazing to see how fictitious these security talks really are. After all, the breaches to the security fence are something of an open secret. These talks launder a reality in which, in certain places, dozens of yards of the fence are missing and in others, miles of fence was never erected in the first place.
Every soldier who ever served along the separation fence is familiar with the theater of the absurd that transpires on a daily basis around the passage of Palestinian workers into Israel. As one soldier described it: "We would stand across from one Palestinian and say, 'Don't cross.' But 200 meters (yards) from there, his friends are going to work freely."
If this was such an open secret, why didn't Israel mend the fence? Perhaps because we like to launder the labor of undocumented Palestinians and we are less comfortable knowing about it. Maybe this is yet another informal means to alleviate pressure in the carrot-and-stick-based control system otherwise known as the occupation.
We have built here smokescreen after smokescreen just to avoid having to look correctly at the reality we have created in the territories. We are "surprised" each time we "discover" the "breaches" to the fence. Otherwise, we would be forced to wonder at the extent of the security provided by a fence crossed by thousands of Palestinian workers each day unhindered, and perhaps even, Heaven help us, what the lives of the families they are trying to support look like. We might need to talk about the complicated system of pressure valves aimed at keeping the Palestinians one millimeter below the boiling point. We prefer to conduct fictitious debates because even the most limited security discussions cannot be held without facing some hard truths.
The fence itself and the breaches to it, the permit regime, the collective punishment, the work permits we give and take, along with the trade permits are all part of a system of carrots and sticks that attempts to keep an entire people below the boiling point. At times, this attempt proves to be a success. At other times, less so. Yet the real story is not the fence but rather the sophisticated system we are running across the Green Line. And we are willing to send our children to serve in this military dictatorship, ready to spend billions, willing to defend our rights to control it to the world, and yes, willing to hold lengthy discussions on the fence – anything to avoid looking the reality revealed to all those who bother to face it in the eye, regardless of whether or not they are a commander in the reserve forces.
Attempts to limit or manage the occupation are a repeat of the cliché of the boy who sticks their finger in a dam. And just as the breaches in the fence are not the reason for the explosion but rather the thing that helps Israel postpone it until the explosion becomes inevitable, the same is true of the Israeli occupation's current success in remaining a controlled issue. This effort, too, is destined to fail.
To ensure the explosion does not take us by surprise, we should for once look beyond the breaches and the fence and begin to look correctly at the reality we have been creating for nearly 55 years now.
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