http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/secret/article.asp?mador=4&datee=07/18/01&id=124523
For Jewish cars only
By Amira Hass
Ha'aretz July 18, 2001
The main highway of the southern section of the West Bank - Highway 60
that links Bethlehem and Hebron - has been closed both to Palestinian
cars and to Palestinian pedestrians since May 3, 2001, after two
women, residents of the Jewish settlement of Efrat, were shot dead by
terrorists.The closure of the highway to Palestinians was ordered by
the Israel Defense Forces. Since that time, no vehicles bearing
Palestinian license plates have been seen on this highway, built on
the lands of Palestinian villages whose access roads have been blocked
in any case for the past 10 months.
About half a dozen or more IDF roadblocks have been set up along
Highway 60, the Bethlehem bypass that has also become the Hebron
bypass. The soldiers operating these roadblocks carry out the orders
of their commanding officers to the letter as they check the papers of
all persons traveling in Palestinian automobiles from East Jerusalem,
which bear (yellow) Israeli license plates.
Palestinians traveling from Hebron to Bethlehem who are found to be in
possession of an identity card of a resident of the territories,
rather than that of an East Jerusalem resident, are told to get out of
the "Israeli" vehicle and to return to Hebron and to continue to
Bethlehem via a highway that is located to the east and which is, for
the most part, poorly paved, winding and narrow.
Thus, Highway 60, a wide road that has been renovated and expanded and
which is well-maintained, is off-limits for the 600,000 Palestinians
who live in the greater Hebron-Bethlehem area and, of course, for
Palestinians who live in the northern section of the West Bank and who
are forced to travel almost as far as the Dead Sea if they are
Bethlehem-bound.
As of last Thursday, the badly-paved, twisting eastern highway is also
out-of-bounds for Hebron residents. After a resident of Upper Betar
and a resident of Kiryat Arba were murdered by terrorists, the IDF
encircled Hebron and its 120,000 inhabitants. It is forbidden for
Hebron residents to exit the city by car, even via the eastern
highway.
When a community is "encircled," the practical meaning is that the
Palestinians living in that community cannot leave Area A. Until
yesterday at least, the encirclement of Hebron and its inhabitants was
still in effect. The soldiers stationed at Hebron's exit routes, which
have been blocked off by huge piles of earth, are making sure that
Palestinians going by foot will not cross the main highway, which is
now used exclusively by Israeli cars, and that these Palestinians will
not enter Areas B or C.
A similar situation prevails in other parts of the West Bank. Here a
main highway has been closed off to Palestinian vehicular traffic,
there "encirclement" has been imposed on an entire district, meaning
that neither Palestinian cars nor even Palestinian pedestrians can
pass through. Earth ramparts and huge concrete blocks can be seen
everywhere. These devices have cut off whole villages from the
district highways. This has been the state of affairs on the West Bank
for the past 10 months.
The West Bank is dotted all over with hundreds of Palestinian
communities that are cut off from one another, while any travel
between them, along dangerous dirt roads, is a tortuous process that
consumes several hours in either direction. It is not surprising that
the majority of Palestinians living in those communities are prepared
to forgo such "pleasures."
Naturally, Israel refuses to accept the Palestinian claim that these
measures constitute a form of collective punishment. Instead, the
Israeli authorities consider the fragmentation of the West Bank to be
a legitimate, unavoidable step intended to prevent terrorist attacks
against the Israelis - both soldiers and settlers - traveling through
and inhabiting the West Bank. According to Israeli military logic,
were it not for this fragmentation and for the internal closures,
there would many more terrorist incidents.
This logic is used to justify the moral legitimacy of the following
statistics: For the sake of the 400 or 500 Jews living today in the
Old City of Hebron, it is completely sensible and perfectly
appropriate that a full curfew should be imposed on the 26,000
Palestinians living there. For the sake of the 6,000 Jewish residents
of Kiryat Arba, it is completely sensible and perfectly suitable that
the 120,000 Palestinians living in Hebron should be encircled.
And, for the sake of the 200,000 Jews living today in the settlements
of the West Bank (except for East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip and
for the sake of the thousands of IDF soldiers protecting those
settlers, it is correct and just that communities with a total
population of 3 million Palestinians should be encircled.
This logic did not begin with the outbreak of the Intifada. This logic
is the bullet-proof vest of a line of thinking that has developed over
a number of decades and which, since 1967, has become the hallmark of
Israeli rule in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. It is obvious
that Jews have every right to live and work in these territories and
that they should receive generous government subsidies.
By the same logic, it is obvious that Palestinians have no right to
live and work within the Green Line. It is obvious that "state lands"
belong exclusively to Jews, not Palestinians. It is perfectly natural
that both the development of master plans and investments in highways
and other infrastructures such as electricity, water and telephone
systems should be for the sole benefit of the Jewish settlements, not
the Palestinian villages adjacent to these settlements. It is
self-understood that no water consumption quotas should be imposed on
the settlements but that such quotas can be imposed on the Palestinian
villages adjacent to them.
In other words, by definition, Jews living in this land have more
rights than the Palestinians living here. Since the Palestinians
refuse to accept this logic, they must pay by forfeiting some of the
rights that they still have.
This logic is continuing to speed down the highway that was built
decades ago. Despite the grim projections, Israeli society has done
very little to try to block this "attitudinal highway" - a highway of
logic that determines that Jews deserve more rights than Palestinians.
Down the broad highways of the West Bank and through the streets of
the Old City of Hebron - roadways that are closed off to Palestinian
cars - Jewish cars are speeding along, Jewish cars bearing stickers
that read, "No Arabs, no terrorist attacks.
