Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Israel's Berlin Wall?, 9/22/03
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec03/wall_9-22.html

Initiating Questions:

1. When you think of the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall of China what comes to mind?


2. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of building a wall between different ethnic or religious groups that do not get along?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Why is the United States threatening to withhold aid to Israel?

The United States is threatening to withhold aid to Israel because of the country's ongoing construction of a 370-mile-long barrier dividing the city of Jerusalem and the Palestinian-populated West Bank region.

2. Why is Israel building a security fence?

The fence, according to the Israeli government, is a security measure designed to keep suicide bombers out. The government blames almost all of the suicide bombings that have taken place over the last few years on Palestinians from the West Bank.

3. What are some of the characteristics of the fence?

The fence would seal off the Palestinian-controlled part of the West Bank from Israeli-populated parts of Jerusalem. It measures 100 yards in width, includes sensors and security cameras and a complicated system of checkpoints and trenches. It is the second of its kind in Israel. Gaza already is sealed off by a patrolled fence that Israelis say has proven effective at limiting attacks.

4. Why are the Palestinians opposed to the security fence?

Palestinians and other critics of the fence call the structure a new "Berlin Wall," referring to the historic 96-mile-long wall that divided the German city of Berlin into East and West for almost 30 years, forcing East Berliners to stay within its borders.

They also argue that part of the wall's route winds through some Palestinian villages -- sometimes separating farmers from their land -- and would not only divide communities, but take disputed land and place it in Israeli hands. The physical barrier, they say, could become a political and geographical division making impossible the independent Palestinian state Palestinians and U.S. officials hope to create by 2005.

5. How could building a fence backfire on Israel?

Mideast analysts, such as New York Times writer Tom Friedman, point out that the fence could backfire on Israel. If the wall eats away at Palestinian land and destroys the Palestinian dream of an independent state, Friedman maintains, Israel could become a combined state of Jews and Palestinians, where Palestinians could demand voting rights.

He argues that since there will be more Palestinian Arabs than Jews living in such a combined land mass by the year 2010, the principle of one man, one vote could lead to more Palestinians voting in Israel, putting Israel in danger of losing its identity as a Jewish homeland.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Ask students to research walls that have historically been built to divide communities. Examples include the Great Wall in China and the Berlin Wall. What are the similarities and differences between these and Israel's wall?

2. Examine the possibility of Israelis and Palestinians sharing one state and Palestinians being given the right to vote in Israel. What are the pros and cons for Palestinians and for Israelis?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.