One Way to Protect a Fence

I stumbled across this report on a mass attempt to cross a border fence.

For the past few years, I have been critical of the building of a fence, actually any fence between Israel and any territory that Arab Pals. claim or administer.

I point out that one day, someone is going to come up with the bright idea that instead of being violent and throwing rocks (before eventually graduating to guns, grenades, bombs and missiles) all they need to gain attention and sympathy is to sponsor a mass march on the fence in places where it is but wire. They can then amass, say, 10,000 Pals. with, of course, women and children out in front, and then charge the fence daring Israelis to fire upon them. What a "PR black eye" we'd get then.

Well, getting back to the story (if you haven't clicked on to read it by now), it tells this story:

Five migrants were killed and nearly 100 injured Thursday during an attempt by hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans to cross from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta by scaling the razor wire fences along the border, the Spanish government said.

The mass attempt by several hundred Africans to enter the enclave on Thursday follows a sharp increase over the last two months in the number of migrants to attempt crossing the two razor wire fences that separate Morocco from Ceuta and Spain's other North African enclave, Melilla.

It took a few paragraphs to find out how they had been killed but perseverance paid off:

Three of the people killed Thursday died on the Moroccan side of the border and two on the Spanish side, said María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, the Spanish deputy prime minister. "The government regrets the loss of human life and hopes for the prompt recovery of those injured," she said.

The news agency Europa Press reported that two of the victims had suffered gunshot wounds, and that the ammunition appeared to correspond with the kind used by Moroccan security forces.

And, in a direct response to my concerns, I read this:

Human rights groups have suggested that at least one of the four deaths may have been the result of overly aggressive police tactics, but the Spanish government said it found no evidence that security forces were to blame.

So, we do have a precedent to relate to.

But let's hope we don't reach that bridge, er, fence.