Multiply Hamdar by thousands more Palestinians, and you have what may be Ariel Sharon’s biggest headache. When Sharon took power as Israel’s new prime minister last week, he called on Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to stop the violence. But Sharon also suggested, in an interview with NEWSWEEK, that it would be all but impossible to seal off the Palestinian areas in order to crack down on terrorists and infiltrators. Three days before Sharon took power, a suicide bomber struck in the coastal town of Netanya, killing himself and three Israelis; Hamas, which claimed responsibility, warned that nine other bombers were at large in Israel and were ready to strike at any time. Israel stationed additional soldiers at bus stations, shopping malls and other public gathering places and tightened the closure of its borders with the West Bank and Gaza. But anxiety among Israelis is at its highest level in years, and the perception is growing that sealing the Green Line between Israeli and Palestinian territory may be impossible.
As NEWSWEEK learned during a tour of the West Bank and Israel last week, there are countless ways to elude roadblocks and security posts thrown up between Palestinian and Israeli territory. As many as 20,000 Palestinians slip through the net each day, some scrambling across footpaths through the West Bank’s arid hills, others driving on forgotten back roads, others brazenly skirting security posts in full view of the Israeli Army. The Israeli government insists that the blockade of the West Bank is helping contain the violence, but it may be doing just the opposite: intensifying Palestinians’ economic misery and rage, while failing for the most part to prevent a determined terrorist from sneaking into the country. “The borders are wide open,” said Abas al Sayid, who represents Hamas in Tulkarm, the bomber’s hometown. “For anyone willing to give his life there are no obstacles.”
Israel’s efforts to isolate West Bank towns from one another have been no more effective. The military has thrown up checkpoints and blockades on highways across the West Bank, a tactic primarily intended to hamper communication among Palestinian activists. But the roadblocks have been an annoyance, not a deterrent: the trip between Nablus and Ramallah, once a 30-minute direct route, now requires a tedious journey of up to three hours along back roads. It’s a similar situation in Jericho, where Israeli Army engineers recently dug a six-foot-deep trench that encircles the Dead Sea town. Last week, Palestinians built a crude dirt road that cuts across the ditch, allowing them to bypass two Israeli guard posts. “So now I’ll use the ‘secret’ route,” said a Palestinian taxi driver. He eased his cab over the ditch and across cauliflower fields, entering Jericho without a problem.
Ahmed Aliyan also had little trouble crossing into Israel. A 23-year-old resident of the destitute Nur Shamas refugee camp in Tulkarm, Aliyan was the one who blew himself up on a busy shopping street in Netanya. It remains unclear how he made the 10-mile journey to the Israeli beach town that morning: the main highway is blocked by a heavily manned military checkpoint and a sniper tower. But just outside Tulkarm, one can turn onto a rough dirt track, barely wide enough for a car, that meanders through farms and villages for five miles before spilling onto the main highway–inside Israel. From there, the trip to Netanya takes 15 minutes.
Israeli authorities admit they often wink at the illegal movement of Arab workers across the Green Line. “We’re not at war against the Palestinian people,” says Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowitcz. And he concedes: “I don’t know if anyone in the world can take hermetic measures against terror.” In West Bank towns seething under the stress of the six-month blockade, that knowledge amounts to power. In Tulkarm, where an eerie recording of Ahmed Aliyan singing the Quran’s verses wafts over a crowd of celebrants, the dead bomber’s father, Omar, says he would be “glad” if his three other sons followed their brother’s fatal journey. There seems to be little Ariel Sharon can do to stop them.
