Israel Tightens West Bank Restrictions

A Palestinian girl waits to cross the Hawara checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Nablus Sunday April 9, 2006.(AP Photo/Nasser Ishtayeh)
 

By ALI DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer
Sunday April 9,2006

NABLUS, West Bank -Israel has tightened travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank in recent months, making movement there harder than at any time since Israel's major offensive in the territory in the spring of 2002, Palestinians and human rights workers said.

The restrictions have effectively divided the territory into three sections. Palestinians living in the northern West Bank are cut off from their jobs in the south, and a wide swath of land along the Jordanian border is off limits to all but its few thousand residents, human rights groups and the United Nations said.

The Israeli army says the new restrictions were put in place following an increase in attempted attacks by militants, including a suicide bombing last week near the Jewish settlement of Kedumim that killed four Israelis.

"The purpose of these restrictions is to defend the citizens of Israel from Palestinian terrorists," the army said in a statement.

But Palestinian officials say the lockdown is collective punishment for the Hamas militant group's overwhelming victory in January parliament elections.

"There's a clear Israeli policy of laying siege to the Palestinian territories in an attempt to make the Palestinian people pay a price for choosing Hamas," said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for new Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader.

Residents and human rights groups say the travel bans are more widespread and have lasted far longer than the usual restrictions Israel puts on the West Bank during Jewish holidays — when Israel believes militants try harder to attack — or when it has specific security warnings.

"I can't remember (the West Bank) being that locked down for such a long period of time," said David Shearer, head of the local U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The United Nations reported a spike in the number of roadblocks in the West Bank, from 376 last summer to 575 now. Temporary checkpoints numbered 160 last week, up from the usual 30 or 40.

Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, said it has grown easier for Palestinians to travel within their sections of the West Bank but far harder to cross from one side of the territory to the other.

"There is a process of cantonization of the West Bank," she said.

The new restrictions are preventing people from getting to their jobs, stopping merchants from bringing goods to market and making it more difficult for Palestinians to obtain medical services, she said.

The measures have had the greatest impact in the northern West Bank areas of Nablus and Jenin, residents and rights groups said.

In recent months, roads Jenin residents routinely used to travel south have been sealed off, funneling travelers through the city of Nablus. Even that route became more difficult last week after Israel blocked the road between Jenin and Nablus with three large earth mounds. Now, only pedestrians can cross.

New restrictions also prevent residents of the northern towns — Jenin, Qalqiliya and Tulkarem — from traveling any further than the Hawara checkpoint at the southern edge of Nablus, cutting them off from jobs and markets in the wealthier areas of the central and southern West Bank. Though Nablus residents can move south, all Palestinian males between the ages of 15 and 30 are barred from crossing Hawara.

The new restrictions have pushed Jenin, already the West Bank's poorest town, deeper into poverty, Shearer said.

Omar Rashed, 45, a sunglasses salesman from Jenin, has been unable to travel his normal sales circuit through Ramallah and Bethlehem in the central West Bank and Hebron in the southern West Bank for about two weeks because of the new restrictions and roadblocks.

"For now, I work in the local market in Jenin. It doesn't make me much money, but I'm surviving," the father of six said.

The army also has sealed off the Jordan Valley, along the West Bank border with Jordan, to all Palestinians who do not live there, separating farmers who are not listed as residents from their fields, the United Nations said.

Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said he plans to pull Israel out of much of the West Bank, has said he considers retaining some control over the Jordan Valley essential to Israel's security.