Palestinians Sue To Use Their Road. Israelis Say No!

Published on Monday, September 17, 2007 by the Baltimore Sun

Palestinians Sue for Use of Road Built for Them

by John Murphy

BEIT SIRA, West Bank - Every day, thousands of Israeli drivers speed through the olive-tree-dotted hills and valleys of the West Bank on Highway 443, a popular four-lane roadway connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
But this convenient commuter shortcut comes at a heavy price for Palestinians.

Since the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, only Israelis have been allowed to use the highway because of security concerns - though it is built on Palestinian land and, according to Israeli courts, is meant primarily for the benefit of thousands of Palestinian villagers who live alongside it.

The ban has effectively marooned about 40,000 Palestinians living in a half-dozen villages that have long depended on the 15-mile highway. Residents complain that the closure has ruined their businesses, created frustratingly long and expensive commutes to work and school on back roads, and isolated their communities from emergency and medical services.

Now the Palestinian villagers are taking their grievances to Israel’s high court, demanding that Israel reopen the road to them.

The court case, in effect, weighs the demands of an estimated 40,000 Israeli commuters, who use the road daily as a rapid thoroughfare, against the needs of about the same number of Palestinians who relied on the road for their own livelihoods.

After a string of Palestinian attacks against Israeli motorists, Israeli authorities barred Palestinians from driving or walking on 443, and they erected steel gates, concrete barriers, walls and security watchtowers to keep them out.

For seven years, Israel has sided with Israeli motorists, turning the highway into a heavily fortified corridor.

Even with the ban in place, attacks against Israelis on 443 have continued, leaving five people dead and a dozen more injured.

Attorneys representing Israeli citizen groups, who are helping to defend the Israeli government against the petition, say they fear that violence would increase if Palestinians and Israelis were allowed to drive side by side again.

“Many Israelis are going to be killed if this petition is accepted by the court. If you let Palestinians on 443, it is like giving them a ticket to enter Tel Aviv,” says Ilan Tsion, an attorney and founder of Fence for Life, a grass-roots group that supports Israel’s separation barrier and other Israeli security measures.

If security is the issue, Israelis - not Palestinians - should be banned from the road, says Limor Yehuda, attorney for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, which, along with six Palestinian villages, filed the petition against Israel.

“It’s a road inside the West Bank, and in this sense it is outside the borders of Israel, and basically Israelis don’t have a right to go there,” she said. “It’s the same as Israelis claiming that Palestinians don’t have the right to enter Israel. The same argument should apply to Israelis [in the West Bank].”

But Israel has been reluctant to give up what has become a key artery for Israeli drivers.

“This is a road that Israel wants,” Yehuda says.Full Story