An article published in The Independent today seeks to focus attention on Road 443, originally a Palestinian road, located in the West Bank. It used to be used by Palestinians travelling to and from Ramallah. Now, however, the road has been appropriated for Israeli use — particularly for the huge settlement of Modiin — and Palestinians (from the West Bank) are technically barred from using it, as The Independent’s Donald Macintyre reports:
“Until 2002, 443 was the main artery connecting the seven villages along the road with each other, with much of their farmland, and with Ramallah, the city to which the 37,000 villagers have long looked as the city they visited for work, for shopping, for medical, especially hospital, services and to visit relatives and friends. Before the intifada, the Israeli authorities, seeking an alternative route to the rapidly expanding dormitory town of Modiin, and to relieve congestion on Route 1 the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, began the process of widening the road, using some privately owned Palestinian land in the process. The Israeli Supreme Court had approved the land requisition more than a decade earlier on the understanding that the widening would benefit local Palestinians as well as Israelis. Five years ago, however – after of a series of attacks, including, in the first years of the intifada, shooting attacks, on Israeli motorists – the military closed off all the feeder roads to 443 from the Palestinian villages alongside it. Israel argues that the prohibition is needed to guarantee the Israeli users of the road security. But an Israeli human rights organisation, Btselem, while recognising Israel’s duty to keep its citizens safe, said the blanket prohibition ‘appears to be based on extraneous reasons, the most important being Israel’s desire to annex, de facto, the area along which the road runs’. It added: ‘If Israel were only interested in protecting the lives of Israelis using the road, without annexing the area, it could limit or even prohibit the travel of Israelis on the road, and build other roads and provide other means of transportation to connect Jerusalem and Tel Aviv’ … Because the road passes directly through the occupied West Bank, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel argues that it is the military commander’s ‘primary duty’ to enable the local population to use the road. ‘Only once this duty has been fulfilled, may the military commander allow Israelis to use the road as well, once he has solved the problem of providing them with the proper protection‘ … The military has built three ‘fabric of life’ roads for Palestinians – again confiscating Palestinian land to do so – which link the villages with a winding, badly worn, single track route to Ramallah and which the military says are kept under review but ‘adequately and fully address the traffic needs of the Palestinians in the area’. The mayor of Beit Sira, Ali Abu Safa, says they create a journey of between 60 and 90 minutes to the city compared with the 12 minutes it took when they used 443 … For while this stretch passes straight through the West Bank, only Israelis are actually allowed to use it. Tens of thousands do so every day. And next week the traffic may be even heavier. While the Israeli authorities are understandably reticent about the security arrangements for the visit of President George Bush, the speculation is that the main Route 1 through Israel from Tel Aviv will be closed to ensure his safe passage from Ben Gurion airport, and normal traffic diverted to 443. There is a mild irony in the prospect that a visit by a US president dedicated to hastening a Palestinian state may oblige many thousands of Israelis to drive straight through the occupied territory on which Palestinians hope that state will be created. For the Israeli motorists who already use it it is a harmless and convenient way of cutting journey times. But for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel the prohibition on Palestinian use of the road is ‘an extreme and grave example’ of what it calls ‘the State of Israel’s publicly declared policy of separation and [illegal] discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin in territories under its control’.”
This article in The Independent is posted here.