ARTicles: Rene -- New Israeli highway separates Palestinians

New Israeli highway separates Palestinians

By Steven Erlanger

Friday, August 10, 2007

JERUSALEM: Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east
of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel
along it - separately.

There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall
wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stone, an effort at
beautification, indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The
Israeli side has various exits. The Palestinian side has few.

The point of the road, according to those who planned it under the
previous prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is to permit Israel to build
more settlements around east Jerusalem, cutting the city off from the
West Bank but allowing Palestinians to travel unimpeded north and
south through Israeli-held land.

"The Americans demanded from Sharon contiguity for a Palestinian
state," said Shaul Arieli, a reserve colonel in the Israeli Army who
participated in the 2000 Camp David negotiations and specializes in
maps.

"This road was Sharon's answer, to build a road for Palestinians
between Ramallah and Bethlehem but not to Jerusalem," Arieli
said. "This was how to connect the West Bank while keeping Jerusalem
united and not giving Palestinians any blanket permission to enter
east Jerusalem."

Sharon talked of "transportational contiguity" for Palestinians in a
future Palestinian state, meaning that although Israeli settlements
would jut into the area, Palestinian cars on the road would pass
unimpeded through Israeli-controlled territory and even cross through
areas enclosed by the Israeli separation barrier.

The vast majority of Palestinians, unlike Israeli settlers, will not
be able to exit in areas surrounded by the barrier or enter Jerusalem,
even the eastern part, which Israel seized in 1967.

The road bars such stops by having Palestinian traffic continue
through underpasses and over bridges, while Israeli traffic will have
interchanges allowing turns onto access roads. Palestinians with
Israeli identity cards or special permits for Jerusalem will be able
to use the Israeli side of the road.

The government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has recently made
conciliatory gestures to the Palestinians and says it wants to
facilitate the creation of a Palestinian state. But Olmert, like
Sharon, has said that Israel intends to keep the land east of
Jerusalem.

To Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer who advises Ir Amim, an Israeli advocacy
group that works for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in Jerusalem, the
road suggests an ominous map of the future, in which Israel keeps
nearly all of east Jerusalem and a ring of Israeli settlements
surrounding it, between largely Arab east Jerusalem and the rest of
the West Bank, which would become part of a future Palestinian state.

In a final settlement, Israel is expected to offer the Palestinians
land swaps elsewhere to compensate.

The road will allow Israeli settlers living in the northern West Bank,
near Ramallah, to move quickly into Jerusalem, protected from the
Palestinians who surround them. It also helps ensure that Maale
Adumim, a suburban settlement of 32,000 east of Jerusalem, where most
of its residents work, will remain under Israeli control, along with
an empty area designated E1, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, that
Israel also intends to keep.

For the Palestinians, the road will connect the northern and southern
parts of the West Bank. In a future that may have fewer checkpoints,
they could travel directly from Ramallah north of Jerusalem to
Bethlehem south of it, while being forced to bypass Maale Adumim and
Jerusalem.

"To me, this road is a move to create borders, to change final
status," Seidemann said. "It's to allow Maale Adumim and E1 into
Jerusalem but be able to say, 'See, we're treating the Palestinians
well - there's geographical contiguity.' "

Measure it yourself, he said. "The Palestinian road is 16 meters
wide. The Israeli theory of a contiguous Palestinian state is 16
meters wide."

Khalil Tufakji, a top Palestinian geographer, said the road "is part
of Sharon's plan: two states in one state, so the Israelis and the
Palestinians each have their own roads." The Palestinians, Tufakji
said, "will have no connection with the Israelis, but travel through
tunnels and over bridges, while the Israelis will travel through
Palestinian land without seeing an Arab."

In the end, he said, "there is no Palestinian state, even though the
Israelis speak of one." Instead, he said, "there will be a settler
state and a Palestinian built-up area, divided into three sectors, cut
by fingers of Israeli settlement and connected only by narrow roads."

Asked for comment, David Baker, an Israeli government spokesman, said:
"The security arrangements on these roads are in place to protect the
citizens of Israel. And they are not connected to any other matter."

Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in
Jerusalem, cited the Bush administration's policy that Palestinians
should be allowed to travel more easily through the West Bank
"consistent with the need to maintain security."

Asked if this road predetermines final status, she said: "The
U.S. government has encouraged the parties to avoid any actions that
would predetermine permanent status," but said she was not authorized
to comment more specifically.

Tufakji says he has become cynical about the way Israel builds for the
future it defines, no matter what it promises Washington. He sees a
West Bank divided into three parts by Israeli settlement blocs, the
most important of which is Maale Adumim and E1, around the capital
that both peoples claim.

"Israel is building the infrastructure to keep E1, to surround
Jerusalem," he said. "They are working to have an area of minimum
Palestinians and maximum Israelis."