Few residents of this massive West Bank settlement believe the government's controversial security barrier can solve any problems, but many say its protecting them would further enshrine their status as Israeli citizens.
The Israeli cabinet decided Wednesday not to build its separation barrier around the Jewish settlement of Ariel, but will instead erect a separate fence around the community, an official said.
The first part of the barrier, whose construction started a year ago, has been completed in the north. Work on a second 100-million-dollar section was delayed by sharp differences in and outside Israel over its route.
"I don't believe in fences. While Sharon is busy trying to please everybody with this fence, I don't think our lives will be changed in any way," says Ariel resident Nati Salomon.
With its modern shopping malls, quiet tree-lined streets and extensive public transportation network, this 16,000-strong community feels just like any Israeli town and is a far cry from the tough pioneering spirit of hardline settlements.
"For me, this is Israel. I live here because the money I spent on my four-bedroom house would only have bought me a parking spot in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem," says Solomon, who works in a shop in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva.
"Now if they build a fence, or even a separate one around Ariel, the only benefit I see is that in the future we will be attached to Israel and I will not live in Yasser Arafat's state," the 33-year-old says.
The prospect of including Ariel, which lies some 20 kilometres (12 miles) into the West Bank, inside the route of the main barrier sparked rare threats of economic sanctions by Israel's main ally, US President George W. Bush, who has committed himself to a Palestinian state.
The US administration argues that the barrier Israel says it is building to prevent infiltrations from Palestinian militants would be tantamount to a border and would complicate future negotiations with the Palestinians if it strayed too much from the 1967 Green Line.
Although Ariel has been the site of several deadly Palestinian attacks in the three-year-old intifada, most settlers here have little time for the diplomacy and political squabbling surrounding the barrier and are critical of the cost involved in its construction.
"The first thing I see is that the government is spending millions of dollars of building this crazy fence around us when the country is going through an economic crisis," says Yaacov Orlev, 64.
"All Israelis can feel the crisis but I don't think many will notice a difference in terms of security when this fence is finished, wherever it is," says this retired Russian immigrant.
Eliezer Gold does not approve of a barrier "protecting some Jews and not others" but like most people in Ariel, a few years down the road he would rather live in Israel than in the Palestinian state.
"With the barrier, maybe we will become like the residents of east Jerusalem, who nobody considers like settlers. So if it means people stop looking at us like fanatics, why not?", he says.
"We are not the ones causing political problems. Ariel is already a suburb of Tel Aviv. We go in and out as we please, I don't feel like a settler. I support those who will be left in settlements to the east of the fence, but I would rather end up on this side."
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