The Green Line and the Security Fence:

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8 In this paper we investigate what Andersen and Yaish neglected – the problem of a security or psychological factor – and introduce a new parameter, the DGL. This is a quantitative variable measured as the shortest distance from any locality to the GL. The latter refers to the 1949 Armstice lines between Israel and its neighbors: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, or Israeli War of Independence, and encompasses Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. This variable was not provided in the census data. We obtained it from the Web site of the Israeli Ministry of Interior. 13 This variable grasps the essence of the “psychological” factor (hereafter, P-factor). Why psychological? Because the distance is directly related to the time needed for a terrorist group to infiltrate Israeli territory and reach this or that city. Before the Security Fence was raised all along the perimeter of the Green Line in 2001-2003, terrorists could penetrate Israel proper virtually through any place at the GL. After an informant's warning, the Israeli police have some time to detect the terrorist – the time is inversely proportional 14 to the distance from the GL to the settlement, a possible target of the terrorist. When, during 1996-2003, the country lived in expectation of new terrorist attacks daily, the Fear on the streets was in the same (inverse) relation to the DGL. The most distant places from the GL, like Eilat or Golan Heights settlements, did not feel this Fear at all. True, the very first terrorist acts were committed in the capitals, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, but later on, virtually every settlement became a target for terrorists, as follows from the geography of suicide bombings (Haifa, Netania, Beer-Sheba, Hadera, etc.).
9 Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Left has been more inclined to make peaceful gestures toward Palestinians. This includes not only transferring land and dismantling unauthorized settlements, but also releasing prisoners and dismantling some military checkpoints and roadblocks as acts of goodwill. These practices invariably led to easier infiltration by terrorists into Israel proper and to new series of terrorist attacks and new victims – which could not have added to the popularity of the Left, especially among those living in proximity to the GL. 15 To the contrary, the Right, enemy of the Oslo Accords, has always been ready for an immediate and strong response, such as punishing any acts of Palestinian violence by permitting new settlement activities, imposing new checkpoints, and setting curfews. These actions could add to the feeling of security for those living closer to the GL. In short, this is the same “Fear factor.” It is our goal to show that the closer to the GL an Israeli Jewish voter lived during the late 1990s, the more biased his/her vote was toward the Right. One could ask “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” since the reverse chain of reasoning is also viable – pro-Right Israelis could prefer settling in Jerusalem and beyond the GL – in the Biblical cities like Hebron, Shechem, Bet El, Efrat, Jericho, and Bet Lehem. This is correct, but the only visible reason behind such a preference is religiosity. Regression analysis would take care of this problem automatically, using religiosity as a control variable. The problem is that, unlike the situation with the individual poll, we do NOT have an adequate representation for religiosity in the aggregate data. How can we circumvent it? The argument is that for religious people, it makes sense to live IN a historic Biblical place, not X km away from it! Therefore, it seems reasonable to exclude
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