(JNi.media) Republican presidential candidate and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is pushing an anti-immigration stance in his Iowa campaigning, calling for a border fence between the US and Mexico like the one separating Israel from the Palestinian Authority territories.
“I was in Israel earlier this year, they built a 500-mile fence and they have it stacked and it’s lowered terrorist attacks in that region by about 90-plus percent. We need to do the same along our border, we’ve obviously got a bigger border, about four times that, but we’re a country that should be able to hold that,” Walker said on the Des Moines Register soapbox at the Iowa State Fair, Buzzfeed reported.
The Israeli barrier, or wall, was built by the late Ariel Sharon’s government near or along the 1949 Armistice “Green Line.” When completed, its total length was set to come to about 430 miles and to include about 9.4% of the disputed territories in Judea and Samaria, as well as 23,000 Arabs.
Gov. Walker, who has been moving to the right even within the Republican candidate herd, neglected to tell his Iowa listeners that right wing Jews living in the settlements are easily as opposed to the security fence as is the left in Israel.
The left hates the fence because it exceeds the outline of the 1967 border; the right hates it because it leaves many Jewish enclaves well outside what is commonly envisioned as the eventual, adjusted border.
He also did not mention that to date the fence has not proven effective in stopping attempted terrorist attacks, as Arabs who want to get through have devised ample ways of climbing over or getting through the fence, or simply bypassing it.
What stopped suicide bombings and terrorist attacks in Israel was an all out effort by the IDF to liquidate the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, followed by old fashioned intelligence gathering, and with utilizing a combination of fixed and mobile checkpoints.
As to the completion of the fence — it will probably never happen. By 2003, 112 miles were completed and by 2006 the wall stretched 225 miles, with 55 miles under construction. By 2012, the fence had been extended only to 274 miles, or 62% of the planned length. Since then, little progress has been made, and in September 2014 the Netanyahu government voted against extending the barrier in the Gush Etzion area, south of Jerusalem (though the government may be restarting to build the Gush Etzion section).
It should be pointed out that evidence is emerging showing illegal immigration into the US has fallen on its own, to its lowest level in two decades. The nation’s population of illegal immigrants has already dropped by about 1 million, according to demographers at the Pew Research Center.