President Donald Trump loves Israel. In a video on his campaign site, he spells out his commitment to Israel in no uncertain terms.
“I am very pro-Israel.”
Apart from Russia, Trump has offered few nations such a clear endorsement.
And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is clearly appreciative. In a tweet late last night, he applauded President Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico.
Trump quickly retweeted Netanyahu’s endorsement.
Israel does indeed have experience building walls along its borders. And Israel’s border walls have long been held up by Trump and his team as a model for what the U.S.-Mexico wall might look like.
The Israel-Gaza barrier separates Israel from the Gaza Strip, a coastal enclave along the Mediterranean Sea. The border wall was a result of the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, better known as Oslo II, a 1995 agreement intended to pave the way to peace between Israel and Palestine. The wall went up, but a lasting peace agreement never materialized.
Completed in 1996, the Israel-Gaza barrier runs 37 miles around the entire Gaza Strip, with openings at just five checkpoints.
But that wasn’t the last wall Israel built. Begun in 1994, the Israeli West Bank barrier (known to critics informally as the Apartheid Wall) currently stretches over 273 miles around the West Bank. The barrier is 90 percent fence and 10 percent concrete slabs. A considerable distance of the barrier – some 167 miles – is yet to be constructed.
Netanyahu is right to point to the Gaza and West Bank walls as a model of what an American border wall might look like. But the results are nothing to be proud of.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice – the main judicial body the United Nations – found that the West Bank barrier was in violation of international law. The following year, a UN report on the humanitarian impact of the barrier found that:
“The route inside the West Bank severs communities, people’s access to services, livelihoods and religious and cultural amenities. In addition, plans for the Barrier’s exact route and crossing points through it are often not fully revealed until days before construction commences. This has led to considerable anxiety amongst Palestinians about how their future lives will be impacted.”
And while it was initially credited with reducing the number of terrorist attacks in Israel, more recent analyses of the West Bank barrier have found that it’s less effective than originally thought. Palestinians simply found other ways to enter the country.
The Gaza wall, likewise, was successful in stopping Palestinian suicide bombers and terrorists from entering Israel by land, but the terrorists adapted. The 2014 conflict in Gaza revealed how easy it was for militants to tunnel beneath the Gaza barrier, a problem that opponents of the Trump wall suggest would be inevitable along the U.S. border, too. Since 1990, over 200 tunnels have been discovered beneath the existing border with Mexico.
Late last year, in fact, the company that helped build the Gaza barrier recommended that Trump not build a physical wall along the entire length of the border. According to a representative of the company, a combination of police, fencing, electronic surveillance, computerized alarm systems, and – yes – some length of wall is the most effective way to deter illegal immigration.
There are, of course, significant differences between any Israeli wall and the proposed U.S.-Mexico wall. For one, Trump’s wall along the Mexican border – all 1,989 miles of it — would be far more ambitious than all of Israel’s walls combined. The total price tag is estimated at $12 to $15 billion.
And unlike Israel and Palestine, Mexico and the U.S. are longtime trading partners and allies. Trump has long claimed that he would force Mexico to pay for the wall, something Mexican President Pena Nieto has publicly refused to do. Since Nieto’s refusal, Trump has proposed a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports in lieu of direct payment. But instituting such a tax risks a trade war that could cost the U.S. billions and trigger another recession.
So why did Netanyahu pledge support for Trump’s boondoggle?
The bromance between Netanyahu and Trump goes back to at least 2013, when Trump produced a pro-Netanyahu video for the Israeli leader about two weeks prior to the Israeli election. With typically Trumpian hyperbole, the then-reality TV star heaped superlatives on his future counterpart.
“…You truly have a great prime minister in Benjamin Netanyahu. There’s nobody like him. He’s a winner. He’s highly respected. He’s highly thought of by all.”
Netanyahu, like Trump, is an Iran hawk who puts counterterrorism at the center of his policy. And a pledge of support for Trump is likely to pay off in sanctions against Iran again and a blind eye toward future Israeli misbehavior.
Featured image via YouTube video.
