'We are facing the hardest Christmas yet'

Israeli road obstacles rise by 40% in a year, strangling the Palestinians, says UN

Rory McCarthy
Thursday December 21, 2006
The Guardian

Bethlehem is suffering from 65% unemployment and government workers have gone unpaid for four months.


On a map the route looks straightforward enough. From Nazareth, amid the ploughed brown farmlands of northern Israel, Highway 60 travels south for nearly 100 miles, winding down through the mountains of the West Bank, through the heart of central Jerusalem and into the narrow streets of Bethlehem.

This is the direct route from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the closest approximation to the journey described in the Bible when Joseph and Mary travelled south to register for taxes in the time of Caesar Augustus.

But to travel the route today is to go through the geographical and political labyrinth of the Middle East conflict, through occupied land, restricted roads, military checkpoints, heavily guarded Israeli settlements, strongholds of Palestinian militancy and the West Bank barrier.

Today, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, and other church leaders from Britain will visit Bethlehem.

Nazareth sits above a broad plain dotted with Arab villages and long plastic greenhouses. A few minutes' drive south the road crosses the 1967 boundary dividing Israel from the occupied West Bank. The Green Line, as it is known, is invisible on the ground and not shown in Israeli school textbooks. The road crosses at the Jalama checkpoint, a large set of yellow metal gates guarded by a two-storey concrete watchtower. A picture of a reindeer has been spraypainted on a wall of army concrete blocks nearby.

At this point the West Bank barrier runs along the Green Line, although for much of its half-completed route it crosses into the West Bank. When finished it will put 10.17% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem between the barrier and the Green Line, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Mark Regev, Israel's foreign ministry spokesman, said the system of checkpoints and closures across the West Bank was based on security concerns. "It is an unfortunate necessity. Hopefully it won't be forever. But this is the reality of the situation," he said.

"In 2006 we had less suicide bombings than we had in one week in 2002 and this is largely because of the measures Israel has taken to prevent suicide bombings and checkpoints are part of that." He said the West Bank barrier had made a significant impact reducing attacks inside Israel. "Where the fence is an issue of quality of life for the Palestinians, for the Israelis on our side of the fence it is an issue of life or death itself."

Cars with yellow Israeli number plates are not allowed to cross Jalama into the West Bank. The road heads into Jenin, one of the main cities of the West Bank, a stronghold of some of the most extreme Palestinian militant groups, including those responsible for suicide bombings. The Israeli military sometimes imposes age restrictions at certain checkpoints, which make it difficult for young men from Jenin to leave the city.

In the centre of town, Sami Jowabri, 44, runs his own taxi company. His drivers have become experts in monitoring the system of checkpoints, road closures and barriers that dot the roads of the West Bank. The number of Israeli military obstacles has risen by 40% in the past year. There are now 528 physical obstacles, the UN said in September. It said closures were a primary cause of the Palestinian humanitarian crisis.

"It's affected our work a lot," said Mr Jowabri. "We have drivers who spend so long at checkpoints they have to sleep in their cars. They tell us it's for security, but I don't think it's about security. If people really want to set off bombs they find a way around the checkpoints."

From Jenin the highway runs down through winding hills and then suddenly runs up against a large series of plastic barriers blocking the road. There is nothing to explain the closure, except a passing Israeli army jeep and the concrete walls of the Shave Shomeron settlement, just north of Nablus.

All the other Palestinian cars on the road turned off a few minutes earlier, avoiding the roadblock as well as a checkpoint nearby at Anabta. Instead, the drivers cross an unofficial dirt road through several fields and over steep ditches. It comes out on a rerouted Highway 60, this time with the occasional car with Israeli plates, driven by residents of the several nearby settlements - settlements considered illegal under international law.

A little further on is a checkpoint. All the Palestinian cars, with their green plates, queue to be checked. The settlers, in their Israeli plated cars, can drive by without stopping.

Soon there is the city of Nablus, closed in by checkpoints where again the Israeli military sometimes imposes age restrictions and where queues at the checkpoints are frequently long and hot-tempered. "It's a humiliation, like we're still living in the 2nd century, not the 21st," said Ali Hassan Ali, 57.

Just before the entrance to Jerusalem, all the Palestinian cars turn off the road. For those West Bank Palestinians who do not have the identity cards needed to enter Jerusalem, they must travel a long and circuitous route along an old British army supply road that runs near Jericho and skirts around the eastern edge of Jerusalem. It takes more than an hour if there are no hold-ups at checkpoints.

Ahmad Shahab, 51, an Islamic studies schoolteacher, is heading from Ramallah to Eizariya, halfway to Bethlehem. "Are these restrictions because they are afraid of attacks? But a person like me over 50, what threat am I for them?"

In Bethlehem itself, Victor Batarseh, the mayor, looks from his office into the doorway of the Church of the Nativity. He blames the checkpoints and closures for the economic crisis that has shaken his town. Unemployment is 65%, large parts of the town's farmland have been taken up by the West Bank barrier, and a financial boycott on the Palestinian Authority has meant no salaries have been paid at the municipality for four months.

"This year is I think the hardest Christmas we are facing," he said. "The wall is turning this city into a big prison for its citizens. There is confiscation of land, closure of the main entrances to the city. All this has a physical and a psychological effect. We can only hope for change."