Livelihoods versus lives

Editorial

Recently, a B.C. community paper ran a short news story on the security fence that Israel is building along the Green Line to protect itself from terrorists.
The story focused on the residents of a small village near Jerusalem, and one woman in particular who was going to be cut off from her work because of the fence. Apparently, the fence will form a barrier between her place of residence and the building in which she works as a Palestinian civil servant. The story laments that if the fence is built, residents of this woman's town will be left "with nowhere to go."

The situation of the woman and others like her is deplorable but, unfortunately, it is not to the Israeli government that she should be pleading. She should be taking her complaints to members of Hamas and other terrorist groups who pass through that area and into Jerusalem in order to carry out their homocide bombings. She should be telling them that if only they stopped, and residents of Jerusalem felt safe, the fence would not have to be built. In reality, it is their violence, and not the Israeli government, that is keeping her from her job.

This woman and her neighbors might lose their livelihoods, but residents of Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs alike, are losing their lives. Israeli patrols cannot be everywhere to protect the entire perimeter of Jerusalem. Right now, the fence is the only solution.

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