This week began with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon succumbing to US pressure and tabling a security cabinet debate on the route of the fence. After preventing his ministers from discussing the issue, Sharon sent his bureau chief Dov Weissglass to Washington. There, he pleaded with US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice not to sanction Israel for building the fence on land beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

The dagger dangling above the prime minister's head was the Bush administration's threat to deduct the hundreds of millions of dollars Israel wishes to spend on the fence from the $9 billion in loan guarantees. In exchange for a promise by Weissglass to change the route of the fence, Rice apparently agreed grudgingly not to deduct the construction outlays from the loan guarantees.
This would be fine news if the fence advanced Israel's national interests. It doesn't.

Here are three falsehoods told about the fence. First, we are told it will keep us safe. Second, we are told that it is not a harbinger of the abandonment of over 200,000 Israelis who live on its eastern side. Third, we are told that the fence is not a border...