CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Israel began constructing an elaborate security fence in the West Bank today. It's to keep Israeli settlers safe from suicide bombers. The concrete barrier will stretch along the so-called green line, which is the West Bank border, before Israel captured it from Jordan in the 1967 war. We begin with Jerrold Kessel just outside Ramallah on the West Bank.</s>JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Anxious times and attempts to fend off the anxieties here to fence off the anxieties, Israelis trying another way to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from infiltrating from the West Bank into their cities. Under the watchful eye of defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, ground is broken for a new security fence, which will be built along the hitherto unmarked border between Israel and the West Bank, which Israel has occupied for the last 35 years. Eventually, the barrier, a $200 million dollar project, will be a combination of obstacles, walls, fences, ditches, patrol roads, and electronic surveillance devices, the first 110 kilometers, a third of the meandering Israeli West Bank border is slated to be completed within a year. The Israeli public pressure for the fence soars every time a Palestinian bomber manages to get through. But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon only reluctantly authorized this first phase of the project. Right wingers fear the fence will eventually set a de facto political border and weaken Israel's hold on the West Bank.
Israel Begins Construction of Fence on West Bank Border