Ingolf Vogeler, Types of International Borders along the U.S.-Mexico Border

Fenced and Walled Borders: Israel-Palestine Walls

Israel has a very tightly fortified fenced and walled border with the Palestine West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, and especially in Jerusalem, walled barriers restrict cross-border crossings to only a few, highly restricted points. Indeed, as a "democracy" Israel has created the most militarized, or some say, security landscapes in the most recent times. Soffer and Minghi (1986) claim that from 10 to 50 percent, depending on location, of this small country consists of three elements of its militarized landscape:

1. military land use: airfields, army camps, training and firing ranges, military industries, fortifications along borders, security border zones;

2. security and defense structures: transportation and settlement patterns, civilian defense, national planning for dispersal settlements, economic infrastructure for emergency situations, ruined villages; and

3. features of past wars: national cemeteries, monuments, old forts.

Security lands uses exceed 50 percent along the border with Lebanon, Negev peninsula, Jordan, Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and Egypt; in the rest of Israel, the percent declines to 10 percent. All governments, of course, justify their exclusionary border actions, whether for security reasons, to control illegal immigration, illegal activities, and/or terrorism, but the results are the same for the people on the ground who seek to move for legitimate personal economic, political, or religious reasons, if no always legally defined by the countries to which they want to move. Landscape of security, however well intended by governments, are also landscapes of exclusion –- preventing people from moving freely from one country to another and/or separating members of the same ethnic groups between countries.