Fences

I first went to Israel in 1992. The first intifada was winding down, I enjoyed unrestricted movement between Israel and the West Bank and was only partly aware of the tensions between Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis and Palestinians. I didn't see a lot of fences, though certainly fences existed, non-physical though just as confining.

This time, I couldn't avoid fences. One of our group, as we were leaving Bethlehem near the end of our trip, remarked, "If you're a manufacturer of barbed wire, you're getting rich in Israel." Barbed wire was everywhere: topping the fence of the pilgerhaus where we stayed, lining the chain link fences separating parking areas from nearby fields and especially enforcing the wall system the Israelis are erecting between Israel and the West Bank territories (we never ventured near the Gaza Strip). And I must say, the Israel barbed wire is nasty looking in its varieties: from the "agricultural" (as in this image) to the military (more like razor-wire, that lines the wall system).

I live in a rural area so I'm used to agricultural barbed wire: I see it all the time keeping cattle in the fields. I've even used it as "mortar" between courses of earth bags in the foundation of our strawbale home. But the barbed wire I saw in Israel almost universally had a human referent: it was used to keep people in place.

This image is a typical example. Though one would think that the chain link fence separating the parking lot at the ruins of Capernaum would be sufficient to keep a person from jumping over and strolling in the unused field, someone had strung barbed wire along it as an additional deterrent. Why the need for additional deterrent? I found myself thinking of images from World War I and II, of prisons and jails, places where barbed wire seems reassuring. But I also found myself thinking of concentration camps, of gulags, where barbed wire seems oppressive.

What's the big deal about jumping over this fence in Galilee to get off the hot asphalt so to stroll through this unused field that it requires barbed wire? I conclude that, in Israel today, barbed wire is becoming the baseline in fencing, promising injury to whoever dares to cross it, whatever the reason. Fences become lines drawn in bolder ink, usually red. The land becomes divided by warnings, sometimes dire. When Frost said "Good fences make good neighbors" (surely not originally) I doubt he had this in mind. These fences say "All neighbors are bad neighbors, untrustworthy and dangerous." Thank you for reading.