Palestinians Fear Two-Tier Road System

By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: March 28, 2008
Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting from A Tira, West Bank.

BEIT SIRA, West Bank — Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.

“They took our land to build this road, and now we can’t even use it,” Mr. Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. “Israel says it is because of security. But it’s politics.”

The object of Mr. Abu Safia’s contempt — Highway 443, a major access road to Jerusalem — has taken on special significance in the grinding Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the Supreme Court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank — a charge that makes many Israelis recoil.

Built largely on private Palestinian land, the road was first challenged in the Supreme Court in the early 1980s when the justices, in a landmark ruling, permitted it to be built because the army said its primary function was to serve the local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In recent years, in the wake of stone-throwing and several drive-by shootings, Israel has blocked Palestinians’ access to the road.

This month, as some 40,000 Israeli cars — and almost no Palestinians — use it daily, the court handed down its decision, one that has engendered much legal and political hand-wringing.

The one-paragraph decision calls on the army to give a progress report in six months on its efforts to build separate roads and take other steps for the Palestinians to compensate them for being barred from Highway 443. It is the acceptance of the idea of separate road systems that has engendered commentary, although legal experts say there is a slight chance that the court could reconsider its approach when it next examines the issue.

“There is already a separate legal system in the territories for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Limor Yehuda, who argued the recent case for the civil rights association on behalf of six Palestinian villages. “With the approval of separate roads, if it becomes a widespread policy, then the word for it will be ‘apartheid.’ ”

Many Israelis and their supporters reject the term, with its implication of racist animus.

“The basis of separation is not ethnic since Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem residents with Israeli ID cards can use the road,” argues Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative research organization. “The basis of the separation is to keep out of secure areas people living in chaotic areas. If the Palestinian Authority, which has thousands of men under arms, had fought terror, this wouldn’t have been necessary.”

The court’s latest decision is significant because it accepted the idea in principle put forth by the army — that while it had no choice but to ban Palestinian traffic from the road because of anti-Israel attacks on it, some of which it says originated from the surrounding villages, it would build separate roads for the Palestinians.

The court has never ruled on the legality of separate roads, despite a growing network of them around the West Bank. If this interim decision reflects its view that such a system is legally acceptable, that represents a big new step. A court spokeswoman said the justices would not comment.

David Kretzmer, an emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, wrote in an op-ed article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz of what he called the “judicial hypocrisy” of Israel’s reign over the territories manifest in this case.

He said that while the changed security circumstances of recent years may have forced a change in the road’s mixed use, “the unavoidable conclusion is that, as unfortunate as this may be, Israelis should not be allowed to travel on the road that was built, let’s not forget, for the benefit of the local population.

“But the military government has, of course, decided otherwise: Israelis will be allowed to travel on the road, while Palestinians — for whom, the court’s ruling says, the road was paved — cannot use it, and access to the road from local Palestinian villages will be blocked.”

For many Israelis, however, the dozens of attacks that have taken place on the road in recent years are reason enough to ban Palestinian traffic there and to limit Palestinians to other routes. In 2001, for example, five Israelis were killed by gunfire on Highway 443 and since then a number of others have been injured from stone-throwing.

Still, the legal case seems more complicated. In The Jerusalem Post, Dan Izenberg wrote that international law and Israeli court decisions were unambiguous on the fact that the road should primarily serve Palestinians rather than Israelis, but that the court was in a delicate position just now because of growing public discontent with it over other issues.

“The High Court in this case cannot stray too far from the interests of the Israeli public, especially at a time when it has more than its share of enemies,” he wrote. “The court knows that Israelis who rely on Highway 443 would not easily accept a ruling that causes them such inconvenience.”

Gershom Gorenberg, an Israeli who wrote a book critical of Israeli settlements, runs a blog called South Jerusalem (www.southjerusalem.com) on which he has posted documents from the 1960s and 70s showing that the governments planned to expand the Jerusalem corridor with settlements and a bigger road after conquering East Jerusalem in the 1967 war. In that sense, he says, the government and army were never honest in what they told the Supreme Court about the purpose of Highway 443.

“Think of the road itself as a settlement,” he said, “part of the conscious effort to change the character of the area, giving it an Israeli stamp. The point was to make it impossible for Israel ever to return certain parts of the land. It is true that Palestinians had free movement on 443 in the 1980s and 1990s before the restrictions were imposed. But to claim that it was built for them does not line up with the paper trail. The cover story of this road has been blown.”

For the 30,000 Palestinians who live in the surrounding villages, lack of access to Highway 443 has been a constant source of difficulty. In one village, A Tira, 14 taxis have permits to travel the road during daylight but locals say that has not eased the burden much.

Each morning, a crowd gathers at the blocked entrance to A Tira, waiting for the Israeli soldiers to open a gate so they can take one of the taxis to Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank.

“Ten days ago, my brother had a heart attack and we had trouble transferring him to a Ramallah hospital,” lamented Said Salameh, 51, a taxi driver who has a permit for the road, as he stood by the entrance one recent morning. “When the gate closes at night, we can’t move outside the village.”

Sabri Mahmoud, a 36-year-old employee of the Palestinian Authority, agreed. “I am always late to work because of this,” he said. “Our life is controlled by the opening hours of the gate. You feel like you live in a cage.”

For many legal commentators in Israel, the most distressing part is that by giving Highway 443 to Israelis and barring Palestinians, Israel is protecting its citizens not from terrorism but from traffic — granting them an alternative to the crowded main Jerusalem road.

Ms. Yehuda, the civil rights lawyer, said that the Supreme Court’s 1982 ruling specifically stated that if the point of the road was primarily to serve Israelis, then it may not be built. Yet now, she added, “The state is essentially aiming to safeguard the convenience of the service road for Israelis who commute from Tel Aviv and the central plains to Jerusalem and vice versa.”

Construction continuing in West Bank settlements despite PM's pledge

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

A new neighborhood comprising 27 trailers is currently under construction at the settlement of Eli, north of Ramallah, even though Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed publicly after the Annapolis conference that any such building would cease.

Even though some of the trailers are being set up on land privately owned by Palestinians, the authorities are taking no action.

Similar unauthorized construction has taken place in the settlement of Maskiot in the northern Jordan Valley. Last December, after the Annapolis conference, Olmert promised to freeze construction in the settlements. But developments in a number of settlements suggest that the settlers are trying to initiate a new wave of construction.

The most notable case is Eli, where work is underway to link the 27 trailers to infrastructure. The construction, which began about a month ago, is expected to be completed in the coming days.

The trailers were put up on site because the Civil Administration imposes severe restrictions on moving complete trailers in the West Bank.

The trailers were placed on land near the Palestinian village of Luban al-Sharqiyah, on the other side of Route 60, connecting Jerusalem and Nablus. They are near the Kinor neighborhood at the Eli settlement.

According to Hagit Ofran, who heads the monitoring of settlement activity for Peace Now, the trailers were set up on privately owned Palestinian land. Ofran bases her claims on comparisons between the trailers' location and data the Civil Administration gave to Peace Now on land ownership in the West Bank.

Security sources also confirmed to Haaretz that at least some of the trailers were placed on privately owned land. For its part, the Yesha Council, which represents settlers in the territories, maintains that the construction has been undertaken on state-controlled land.

Regardless of who owns the land, it is certain that the construction at Eli is being done without authorization. The settlement lacks an approved blueprint for construction and expansion, and if the land is indeed private Palestinian property, there is no way to issue authorization for building.

There is also no evidence that the construction has been carried out with any authorization from the political leadership.

The Civil Administration has not taken any practical steps to prevent the new construction. The defense establishment is investigating the building at Eli and the nearby outposts, because it seems that large portions of the settlement were put up illegally.

Last week, Channel 1 reported that 10 settler families moved in at Maskiot in the Jordan Valley. Maskiot began as a base for Nahal, a military unit, and several years ago included a pre-conscription military academy for national-religious youth.

In December 2006, then-defense minister Amir Peretz approved the decision to build 30 new homes there, where the evacuees from the settlement of Shirat Hayam in Gush Katif could be housed. Peretz revoked his decision after he came under criticism.

Construction was renewed in Maskiot recently, without government approval, and earlier this month the families were brought in to live in the new houses. The Civil Administration issued orders for razing seven homes that were built illegally.

According to Captain Tzidki Maman, spokesman for the Civil Administration, "the illegal construction at Eli is known and is being examined. Another part of the construction is being considered by the High Court of Justice."

He says that the Maskiot construction "is under constant monitoring and orders to raze the illegal construction have been issued. The implementation of the orders will be carried out on the basis of broader policy and considerations."

Jerusalem off the radar

Ben White, The Electronic Intifada, 13 February 2008

Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was reported to have suggested that the question of Jerusalem would be "left to last" in negotiations with the Palestinians. This was apparently on account of the issue being "too sensitive and complex," as well as fears that talks on Jerusalem would cause the departure of religious right-wingers from Olmert's ruling coalition.

Domestic political considerations will certainly have played a part in the prime minister's thinking, but there is another possible motivation for leaving this "final status issue" for further down the road. In recent weeks, and indeed, going back to the December announcement of the expansion of West Bank settlement Har Homa, the Israeli government's approach to Jerusalem has been at best contradictory, and at worst, deeply cynical.

During January there was a rash of reports -- barely covered in the Western media -- about Jewish construction in occupied East Jerusalem. On 23 January, it was reported Agence France-Presse that 30 percent (almost 2,500 housing units) of newly-authorized construction in Jerusalem municipality was slated for areas in occupied or illegally annexed East Jerusalem. Just last week, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that plans were advanced for 200 Jewish homes in a "strategic location" in East Jerusalem requiring "Palestinian buildings" to "be demolished to make room."

Another example is the new housing units in Maaleh Hazeitim, a project initially funded by the patron of ultra-nationalist Ateret Cohanim group, Irwin Moskowitz, and backed by Jerusalem mayor at the time, Ehud Olmert. Those behind the increasing construction, Haaretz reports, intend Maaleh Hazeitim to be an obstacle to creating Palestinian territorial continuity "between the West Bank to the east, and the Temple Mount."

There is more, such as the private developments of Nof Zion and the City of David housing project, the former specifically targeted at Jewish-Americans. While not official government initiatives, Israeli architect Efrat Cohen-Bar, from the planning rights non-governmental organization Bimkom, pointed out that "all small settlements of Jews in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods make it impossible to divide."

Olmert's office, meanwhile, continues to send confusing messages about official policy towards the settlements. One week, there is a much-heralded freeze on settlement expansion in the West Bank -- but excluding East Jerusalem. The next week, it is a total ban, including construction in existing settlements. Then to make all of that seem academic, brand new buildings spring up in occupied East Jerusalem.

It is actually a misnomer to describe Jerusalem as being any more or less complicated than the other elements of a future agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. International law already caters to the broad territorial questions about dividing the city, and there are numerous, highly practical, solutions available for the delicate matter of sovereignty over the Old City's holy places.

In reality, what makes it so difficult to find a solution is the cross-party consensus in the Israeli political establishment that Jerusalem is the "eternal, undivided" capital of the Jewish state. From the Knesset's 1980 declaration to then Prime Minister Ehud Barak's party election manifesto in 2000 and public declarations by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, there is complete unity around this compromise-defying policy.

Such a position can never be accepted by the Palestinians, who, for their part, are simply demanding that international law be heeded, that Israel's post-1967 annexation and occupation should not be recognized, and that East Jerusalem becomes the sovereign capital of their independent state. Yet as any map of Jerusalem shows, successive Israeli governments of the last forty years have deliberately used settlement construction in order to encircle the unilaterally-expanded municipality and render equitable partition impossible.

Reports that Olmert is feeling the heat from the ultra-Orthodox members of his coalition may be read by some as yet another example of the deleterious effects of religious extremism. In fact, persisting in the fiction not only that Jerusalem is "eternal and undivided," but that peace can be built on such a position, is part of the Israeli mainstream. Thus it might well be the case that leaving Jerusalem "to last" is actually an intentional move, freeing up Israel to create yet more "facts on the ground" in the meantime.

The first intifada 20 years later

The first Palestinian intifada (uprising or shaking off) erupted dramatically on 9 December 1987 after twenty long years of brutal Israeli military occupation. The Palestinians had had enough. Not only had they been dispossessed of their homeland and expelled from their homes in 1948 to make way for the boatloads of European Jewish immigrants flooding into Palestine on a promise of a Jewish state, they had been made to suffer the indignities of a people despised and rejected by the whole world. They were the victims of a colonialist project that denied their existence and their rights to self-determination in the land that they had continuously inhabited for millennia so that a state could be created in all of the land exclusively for Jews from anywhere in the world. To this day, the Zionist project has held powerful countries and august institutions hostage in its service, despite the indisputable rulings of international law and United Nations resolutions supporting the rights of the Palestinians. What Israel had not bargained for, though, was the steadfastness of a wronged people and their indomitable spirit that sent the first stones hurtling towards army tanks and bulldozers in their desperate bid to shake off Israel's crushing occupation. So began the "War of the Stones."