An ugly idea whose time has come

That’s how Hillel Halkin describes “the fence” in this piece for the Jerusalem Post. He finds the idea of the fence extremely unappealing, but the logic of starting to build it compelling. As Halkin sees it, either Israelis want to live together with Palestinians or they don’t. If they do, starting to build the fence is a good idea because a fence would be quite harmful to Palestinian interests and thus commencing construction gives Palestinians a needed incentive to negotiate reasonably. And if Israelis don’t want to live with Palestinians, then they will damn well need a fence.