AP News, December 26th, 2006
The 24-mile journey from Nablus to Ramallah, two of the West Bank's most important urban centers, used to take 35 minutes. Today, a network of Israeli military checkpoints has turned the trip into a harrowing journey that can last as long as four hours.
Israel's promise this week to ease the travel restrictions could vastly improve the lives of West Bank residents. But after six years of watching roadblocks, checkpoints and other obstacles multiply, Palestinians are skeptical their lot will change.
"At night, I dream that the crossing disappeared. But it's just a dream," Radwan Ghaja, a 33-year-old teacher, said as he waited to cross through the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus.
"This is the toughest crossing in the territories," said Ghaja, who works in Nablus but lives in the nearby village of Bidya. "Every day, I stand an hour, an hour and a half here."
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the military to dismantle more than two dozen unmanned obstacles that block roads and streamline security checks at the crossings. Olmert hopes to bolster the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who is locked in a bitter power struggle with the anti-Israel Hamas militant group.
Israel says the travel restrictions _ first imposed after the Palestinians rekindled their uprising against Israel in late 2000 _ have prevented dozens of attacks on Jewish targets in West Bank settlements and Israel.
Palestinians charge the hobbling of their movement _ which grew more severe after Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections in January _ is collective punishment. The roadblocks have contributed to the West Bank's economic troubles and fueled fears that Israel is carving up the area to prevent them from gaining independence.
Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said officials have not yet decided which of the hundreds of roadblocks will be dismantled. In the meantime, the army has been ordered to beef up its staffing at major checkpoints to speed up movement, she said. The major crossings, like Hawara, are unlikely to be removed.
Within days, the military is to be instructed to start knocking down dozens of unmanned roadblocks, most of them mounds of earth, in the area of Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem, Eisin said.
The dismantling will take several weeks. But in the end, "someone will leave his house in Hebron and go to Nablus (without encountering obstacles), and say, 'Wow,'" she said.
Olmert has also given an order to complete, within nine months, a network of bypass roads that would allow Palestinians to avoid multiple checkpoints.
On Tuesday, there were no signs of improvement at major crossings. At the height of evening rush hour, just one of five lanes was open for pedestrians at the Qalandia checkpoint, the main entry to Jerusalem from the northern West Bank. Travelers waited for some 40 minutes to cross.
The situation was not much better at Hawara, an imposing four-lane thicket of turnstiles and X-ray machines that resembles an international border. More than 300 people were waiting in three lines to cross at mid-afternoon. The fourth lane was closed.
Thousands of Palestinians pass every day through the terminal, where Israeli soldiers check their bags, sometimes frisk them, and in some cases, demand that men lift their shirts to prove they are not concealing weapons.
The tense wait inevitably causes friction between soldiers and the Palestinians who pass under their gaze.
"No favors here," a gruff soldier told people who tried to get through the line faster.
The number of roadblocks in the West Bank is in dispute. Israel puts the figure around 400 and the Palestinians at 600. In November, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 528 checkpoints and obstacles in the West Bank, up from 326 in August 2005.
Whatever their number, the restrictions have carved up the territory into three sections.
Young Palestinian men _ the typical profile of the suicide bomber _ who live in the more radical northern West Bank are not allowed to travel to the territory's center and south. And a wide strip of land bordering Jordan can only be reached by the few thousand Palestinians who live there or have permits to work in Israeli settlements in the area.
Although only a small number of the roadblocks are to come down at this initial stage, Saeb Erekat, a top Abbas aide, was hopeful. "We consider this a step in the right direction," he said.
