(COMMONDREAMS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed a plan to encircle his entire country with a fence as protection against “wild beasts,” referring to those in neighboring Arab states.
He made the comments Tuesday while visiting an 18-mile stretch of fence already under construction on the Israel-Jordan border.
“At the end of the day, in the State of Israel as I see it, there will be a fence like this one surrounding its entirety,” he said, according to a statement on the Prime Minister’s website.
“They tell me: Is this what you want to do, defend the villa? The answer is yes. What, are we going to surround the entire State of Israel with a fence, a barrier? The answer is yes, unequivocally. In the environment in which we live we must defend ourselves from the wild beasts.”
He added that it would be a multi-year project, multi-million dollar project.
“Perhaps the most notorious of Israel’s walls built for ‘security purposes’ runs within the occupied West Bank,” as Al Jazeera reports. It was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004.
Haaretz columnist Asher Schechter argues that “Israel is already not even trying to function like a democracy,” and writes that Netanyahu’s statement is “a display of everything wrong with Israel under his leadership. Israel circa 2016 is fearful, hateful, and paranoid, self-involved to a degree even Donald Trump would find distasteful, and soon it might have big walls surrounding it from every which way, quarantining it, and a political system where only Jews need apply.
On Wednesday Netanyahu also spoke to the Israeli parliament and referred to the existing fence along the border with Egypt, saying that it prevented Israel from being “overrun” with migrants.
This article (Netanyahu Wants Fence Around Israel to Keep Out ‘Wild Beasts’) originally appeared on CommonDreams.org and is licensed Creative Commons 3.0. The views expressed are those of the author.
A high, armed and electrified fence completely around Israel. Is that such a terrible idea?
Its is not only a good idea It is a must do project to protect insentient familys from terror
Will the fence be bottle rocket proof?
He wants the same for his other Country that he runs.
He fears Chihuahuas and Beavers..
The beasts are all non Jews! We are meant to be slaves to the Jews. Non Jews can be killed and our children, too. Everything belongs to them! The Talumad and/or the Torah justifies this!
I believe that after World War II Mr Natanyahu would have been quite anxious and thrilled to have Palestine “overrun” with migrants. Of course those migrants were European.