Israel is weighing a plan to bar Palestinians from the main roads in the West Bank to protect Israeli motorists from roadside shootings, Israeli officials said on Wednesday.
Palestinians denounced the proposal as segregation in the West Bank, the territory the Palestinians are seeking as part of a future state. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said it would be "the official introduction of an apartheid system."
A senior Israeli official, who asked not to be named because a number of options are still under consideration, said:
"We think it is necessary to separate traffic on the roads, not all the roads, but the main roads, where Israelis are most vulnerable. It doesn't call for complete separation everywhere, and we see this as sort of a stopgap measure."
The developments came as the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, prepared to meet President George W. Bush in Washington yesterday. Abbas is pushing for a resumption of full-scale peace negotiations, while Israel is demanding that Abbas first crack down on armed Palestinian groups.
The Bush administration says Israel has a right to defend its citizens, but is also urging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government to ease the restrictions placed on Palestinians.
In response to a Palestinian shooting on Sunday that killed three young Israelis, the Israeli military currently bars private Palestinian vehicles from traveling on two large stretches of Route 60, the main north-south road in the West Bank. The road links the largest Palestinian cities and is also heavily used by Jewish settlers.
Throughout the past five years of fighting, Israel's security forces have set up scores of checkpoints and roadblocks that have limited or prohibited Palestinian movement on the West Bank road network.
In many places, the military has placed concrete blocks, built earthen mounds and dug trenches to prevent Palestinian village roads from connecting to the main roads.
"Most of the traffic is already separated," said Dror Etkes, an official with Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements. "There aren't a lot of places left where Israelis and Palestinians are driving on the same roads."
Israel eased some travel restrictions after a February truce that has reduced but not halted the violence.
The Israeli plan now under consideration was first reported on Wednesday in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, which described it as a more formal -- and perhaps permanent -- separation of Israeli and Palestinian traffic in the West Bank.
The newspaper said it could involve building new roads that would be used only by one side or the other, and was part of a larger proposal to completely separate the two sides.
In recent years, Israel has built numerous bypass roads specifically designed to connect large West Bank settlements to Israel.
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
BELT-TIGHTENING: Chinese investments in Cambodia are projected to drop to US$35 million in 2026 from more than US$420 million in 2021 At a ceremony in August, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet knelt to receive blessings from saffron-robed monks as fireworks and balloons heralded the breaking of ground for a canal he hoped would transform his country’s economic fortunes. Addressing hundreds of people waving the Cambodian flag, Hun Manet said China would contribute 49 percent to the funding of the Funan Techo Canal that would link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia’s shipping reliance on Vietnam. Cambodia’s government estimates the strategic, if contentious, infrastructure project would cost US$1.7 billion, nearly 4 percent of the nation’s annual GDP. However, months later,
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
A beauty queen who pulled out of the Miss South Africa competition when her nationality was questioned has said she wants to relocate to Nigeria, after coming second in the Miss Universe pageant while representing the West African country. Chidimma Adetshina, whose father is Nigerian, was crowned Miss Universe Africa and Oceania and was runner-up to Denmark’s Victoria Kjar Theilvig in Mexico on Saturday night. The 23-year-old law student withdrew from the Miss South Africa competition in August, saying that she needed to protect herself and her family after the government alleged that her mother had stolen the identity of a South
RSS