|
This is a personal view of life at Israel's narrowest point. I
live some 8 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. This sounds lovely and
picturesque. My son and his friends sometimes walk to the beach with a
picnic lunch. It is no big deal for a teenager to walk 8 miles with a
backpack. But it does make me shudder to think how quickly enemy soldiers
could transverse Israel at its narrow waistline. And of course, the enemy
is very near.
You see: if I live 8 miles from the sea, I
live about 1 mile away from the PA. That's not a lot. Before Israel
started building the security fence, we used to see dozens of young
Palestinian men crossing into Israel on foot every time we passed by.
Most were simple, poor people looking for work and you hesitate to stop a
man who wants to put a bit of bread on the table, even if he is an illegal
alien. Some came to steal - I believe we had the highest rate of auto
theft in the world. It got so bad that, being the only lawyer in my
apartment building, I had the stamps and papers ready at all times to take
affidavits attesting to the fact that a car had been stolen. I lost the
habit of asking what the matter was – just took the sworn statements as a
matter of course.
But all this is a quaint annoyance
compared to the real problem: mixed in with the laborers and the thieves
were murderers who came to kill us and to kill our children. The fence
has made their lives more difficult. A couple of months ago, a band of
these murderers go stuck at the fence and, going around the long way, were
stopped at a roadblock. The soldiers noticed the suicide belts and the
terrorists were taken in for questioning. Under interrogation their goal
was disclosed: my daughter's elementary school! These evil murderers had
hoped to sneak into the schoolyard during recess and explode themselves
among the children.
So you see, life is not so simple when you
live in a country that is only 9 miles wide. What would you do if it were
you or your children they were coming to blow up?
Naomi Leitner
Attorney at Law
Kfar Saba, Israel |