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Israel wastes 250 million shekels on settlement roads to nowhere
By Amos Harel
Tags: separation fence, West Bank 

Just a few minutes drive from the West Bank settlements of Ofarim and Beit Aryeh lies a unique Israeli invention. A complex network of roads, kilometer after kilometer of pavement, leading to - well, that's sort of the thing: it doesn't lead anywhere.

The casual visitor must use his imagination. What ancient civilization operated here, paving such long roads, only to leave them entirely abandoned, completely unused? Was there some higher force involved that stopped the paving work of each road just a few dozen meters from where it should have met another road?

The explanation is far more prosaic. The separation fence, six years into the apparently endless project, leaves in its wake no small number of absurdisms, the network of roads around Beit Aryeh is just one of them. The construction of about 60 percent of the fence has proven an effective aid in the war on Palestinian terror, as well as IDF detentions and good intelligence the Shin Bet gets from interrogations.
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The number of terror attacks inside the Green Line that originate in the West Bank has dropped by 90 percent since 2002. Something else has occurred, despite promises by the fence's father, Ariel Sharon: the fence has become a political fact, impacting negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Also, settlements' locations, west or east of the fence, will in the long run determine their fate.

Over the past year and a half, the pace of construction on the fence has slowed, mostly for political reasons. The government cannot circumvent a U.S. veto and High Court of Justice rulings and include large settlement blocs inside the fence. The treasury has also tightened the purse strings. In addition, the sense of urgency has decreased in light of the drop in terror. Bulldozers, except for in a few short sections north of Jerusalem, have slowed to a stop. There are huge openings in the incomplete fence - across from the Ariel-Kedumim bloc, near Ma'aleh Adumim and in Gush Etzion - occasionally exploited by terrorists on their way to attack inside Israel.

The slowed construction on the fence has halted construction in areas where Israel was trying to swallow more West Bank territory than it could really digest, like in Beit Aryeh and Ofarim located northwest of Ramallah. The unfinished web of roads is an extreme example of a known phenomenon in the territories: huge sums of taxpayer money spent with minimal public oversight and in close cooperation between the defense establishment and settlement leadership. A conservative estimate puts the roads and fence near Beit Aryeh at NIS 200-250 million and all serving a population of 4,000 within two settlements. The cuts in the fence budget led to a works freeze, leaving a huge white elephant that senior military officials say only serves youth who sneak onto the empty roads late at night to hold car races.

Beit Aryeh and Ofarim are considered important because the surrounding hills overlook Ben Gurion International Airport runways. Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon loved the "porch," an observation point at Beit Aryeh that overlooks the coastal plain and an ideal spot to explain the problem of Israel's small "waist." Ehud Barak often speaks of the difficulty withdrawing from a region with strategic importance.

However, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has recently spoken of the pointlessness of insisting on another few hundred meters of hills, actually worked harder than his predecessor to determine practical control of the two settlements. From Sharon to Olmert, Israel fortressed its hold on the area with the fence and the roads, even though officially the state claims the fence is "temporarily for security purposes" and is unrelated to the permanent solution. In this area, in contrast to other stretches, it does not appear the Palestinians have any intention of compromising on this stretch of border.

The fence route in the region has undergone a number of changes. In 2006, Olmert removed the existing road from Beit Aryeh west to Rentis Junction from the fence area. The fence was to move north along a not-yet paved road. The new road connects Beit Aryeh and Ofarim to Nahshonim and Elad, which is inside the Green Line.

The Palestinians benefit from the new route, getting back a few thousand dunams on their side of the fence. But the real reason for the change was supposed to be a Palestinian bypass highway (the original road went through the village of A-Luben) and shorten the distance between the settlements and Israeli territory.

Defense sources involved in the fence construction told Haaretz that works in the area were frozen due to budget cuts and because other stretches of the fence have a higher priority. Colonel (res) Shaul Arieli, an expert on the fence for the Peace and Security Council and part of the Geneva Initiative, says that the project includes about 20 kilometers of road in the area, in tough mountainous terrain, as well as 8 kilometers of fence whose construction has been halted for the moment. "The decisions were made in 2006 but their overall meaning only became clear now. It was a gimmick slated to create a political fact in the long term in a controversial area under the guise of security. In practice, the security interests were sacrificed for the interests of a future settlement. The fence was built to protect a future road instead of the road that was serving the residents in practice."

Arieli added that the character of the terrain substantially raises the cost of the project. This is unnecessary fence for which unnecessary roads were paved. A political gimmick, not a security trick. The state invested huge sums in a region we may not be able to keep under the permanent arrangement. You want to protect two settlements? You should just have built a simple fence around the two of them."

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