Study: Israel can remove 10 key West Bank checkpoints
30 Apr 2008
Israel should remove 10 major West Bank checkpoints to give a badly needed boost to the Palestinian economy, a group of Israeli ex-generals and Palestinian officials said in a joint report Wednesday.
ADVERTISEMENT
Removing the roadblocks would not compromise security for Israel, but they cause major disruptions to Palestinian trade and movement, the report said. Its authors include two former chiefs of Israel's military government in the West Bank.
The report comes just days after the World Bank warned that the Palestinian economy, which has received massive foreign aid, is not likely to grow this year, largely due to continued Israeli restrictions on movement.
Representatives of donor countries will meet in London later this week to review the aid effort ? $7.7 billion pledged over three years. The bank warned that more aid may be needed if the Palestinian economy doesn't recover from several years of downturn. A recovery depends on easing restrictions, the bank said.
Israel says it's willing, in principle, to ease restrictions but that Palestinian militants still pose a threat. A hasty removal of checkpoints could lead to more attacks, which would then harm peace efforts, Israel argues.
Israel erected a network of hundreds of roadblocks, dirt mounts and gates after the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting in 2000. It insists it is still the most effective way to deter militants.
However, Wednesday's study said Israel could ease up without compromising security.
"While there was once a serious security need for checkpoints and roadblocks, this need is diminishing with time," the study said. "The checkpoints and roadblocks policy, however, has not changed accordingly."
A removal of checkpoints is in Israel's long-term interest because it would help defuse Palestinian resentment and improve the standard of living, said one of the authors, Israeli reserve Brig. Gen. Ilan Paz, who headed the West Bank's military government from 2002-2005.
"If Israel wants the Palestinian economy to improve ... we have to change the reality in the West Bank," said Paz. "We want to create a light at the end of the tunnel for the Palestinians, so they won't search for revenge or hatred against the Israelis."
The six-member group, which also included three senior Palestinian government officials, said the majority of West Bank roadblocks should be removed, arguing they've become unnecessary with the construction of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank. The barrier, expected to stretch about 500 miles, is two-thirds complete.
The report said a blanket removal would be impossible because it is opposed by the army and Jewish settlers.
Instead, the group focused on 10 checkpoints that Palestinian officials said are particularly harmful to trade. The list included three checkpoints around Nablus, the West Bank's second largest city and a former militant stronghold.
In recent months, the Palestinian government tried to assert control in Nablus, deploying security forces and trying to get gunmen off the streets. Israel has portrayed the deployment as a good start, but said the Palestinian Authority needs to do more. In the meantime, Israeli troops carry out almost nightly arrest raids in the city.
The study said the Nablus checkpoints can be removed, provided Israeli and Palestinian forces step up coordination and Palestinian forces heighten their activity in the city.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev reiterated that Israel is taking some risks but does not want to be hasty. "We have an obligation to protect our people from a very real terrorist threat that exists in the West Bank," he said.
In other developments, Israeli troops on Wednesday shut down a women's sewing cooperative run by the Islamic Charitable Association, the largest Islamic charity in the West Bank city of Hebron.
The Israeli military says the charity is a Hamas front, and that it funds violent activity against Israel. The military has ordered all of the charity's operations closed, including private schools, among them a boarding school for children from disadvantaged homes. The charity denies it is linked to Hamas.
Israel closed other offices of the charity earlier this year. That closure came after two Hamas members from the city carried out a suicide bombing that killed an Israeli.
Hamas advocates Israel's destruction, and the group violently seized power in the Gaza Strip last year. Both Israel and the moderate Palestinians rulers of the West Bank fear Hamas will try to wrest control of the West Bank as well.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggested Israel would not immediately launch a broad military operation against Gaza rocket-launching squads who attack Israeli border communities almost daily.
"Our gut urges us to react immediately and with all our might," Barak told reporters. "But on the other hand we need to act wisely, wisely and, I say again, wisely in order to decide on the moment and the correct way to bring an end to the rocket fire."
On Wednesday, six rockets and three mortar shells were fired. No injuries were reported.
Israel sealed off Gaza after the Hamas takeover. On Wednesday, it clamped a two-day closure on the West Bank, ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day observances beginning at sunset. Closures ban Palestinians from entering Israel, and are routinely imposed around major holidays and events to lessen the chance of militant attacks.