The Great Divide: Israel's Forbidden Road

[Purveyor]

It runs straight through the heart of the occupied West Bank, but Palestinians are not permitted even to set foot on the asphalt their ancestors laid. Donald Macintyre reports from Beit Sira


Published: 02 January 2008
It's just after dusk on Route 443, where the heavy northbound traffic from Jerusalem decelerates as it approaches the Maccabim checkpoint. The Israeli commuters, impatient to get home to Tel Aviv or the dormitory town of Modiin, have no idea that in the darkness to the left of the four-lane highway, everyday scenes are unfolding that tell their own story about this land and the conflict that has scarred it for 40 years.

We are in a side road, the one that drivers used to take if they were heading for Beit Sira and the other West Bank villages beyond it, until the Israeli military closed the entrance to cars with two rows of solid concrete blocks. Beyond them, you can just make out the distinctive green and white Palestinian number plates of some 30 parked cars belonging to the very small minority of Palestinians here who have a coveted permit to work in Israel. The labourers are on their way home after a day that may have begun as early as 3.30am to allow time to queue at the checkpoint in time to start jobs paying around £12 per day net of permit and travel costs.

As the home-bound workers with permits start arriving at the barrier, a Jewish woman is negotiating beside her parked car with a young Arab seamstress from the village over how fast she can embroider a dress for her clothing business in the orthodox religious Israeli community of Bnei Brak. "I come here because its 200 per cent cheaper," explains the woman, who gives her name only as Naomi. As she talks, an Israeli police van pulls up, its blue light flashing, with two brothers arrested that afternoon in Tel Aviv for working in Israel without a permit.

The older brother Walid, 53, is a veteran illegal worker, as skilled in negotiating the 10 kilometres or so of hill paths that will avoid the checkpoints and patrols of the Israeli military until he catches an Egged bus to the city, as he is in his trade of electrician. No he says, although they were bound they had not been beaten or humiliated by the policemen on this occasion. And no, it will not deter him from taking the risk again. "I will go back to Tel Aviv tomorrow," he says defiantly.

But it is the highway itself that underlines the separation between Israelis and Palestinians here. For Naomi it is a supremely fast and convenient route to a meeting with her workers. Palestinians, like Walid face a fine for even walking on or across it, let alone driving on it. For while this stretch passes straight through the West Bank, only Israelis are actually allowed to use it. Tens of thousands do so every day. And next week the traffic may be even heavier. While the Israeli authorities are understandably reticent about the security arrangements for the visit of President George Bush, the speculation is that the main Route 1 through Israel from Tel Aviv will be closed to ensure his safe passage from Ben Gurion airport, and normal traffic diverted to 443.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3300992.ece