WEST BANK: Residents of villages near Hebron are forced to walk several kilometers around Israeli roadblocks that are separating the city from it's villages

Record ID: 560022

  • Title: WEST BANK: Residents of villages near Hebron are forced to walk several kilometers around Israeli roadblocks that are separating the city from it's villages
  • Date: 12th June 2007
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE)(Arabic)UM ARIJ, RESIDENT OF BEIT UMMAR, SAYING: "It is a difficult world here. Especially for children on their way to and from school. During the winter it is cold and their boots get wet and covered in mud. And during the summer it is too hot. It is difficult."
  • Embargoed: 27th June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA8PF0W8MR7628A68QHFT49SZXG
  • Story Text: Israeli military checkpoints and restrictions on movements of people and goods in the West Bank have divided the occupied Palestinian territory into economically isolated enclaves and forced many residents to walk several kilometres on a daily basis to reach their destinations. The movement of some 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank is diverted, hindered and obstructed daily by more than 500 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks and a 700km barrier that encroaches on 10 percent of their territory.
    Twelve of those checkpoints are situated in and around the city of Hebron, separating it from nearby Palestinian towns and villages or dividing Jewish settlers from Palestinians to avoid friction between them.
    Arab residents of the adjacent towns and villages often have to walk more than 25 kilometres to get to work or school.
    "I travel a distance of 20 kilometres. It costs me a lot of money to transfer the goods. It used to take me 2 minutes door-to-door. Now I have to bring a car from the town to here and then carry the goods across. This costs me more money, more trouble and more time. So it makes for a very difficult situation," Majed Abu Sbeih told Reuters Television.
    According to a May 9 World Bank report, Israeli restrictions deny Palestinians access to large segments of the West Bank, including all areas within the municipal boundaries of settlements, the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem, restricted roads and other 'closed' areas.
    The report describes Israel's West Bank road and zoning restrictions as fragmenting the territory into small and 'disconnected cantons' and as 'protecting and enhancing the free movement of settlers and the physical and economic expansion of the settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population.'
    The Israeli Human Rights organisation Bt'selem says that since the beginning of Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation in September 2000, as many as 43 Palestinians, including 13 infants and children and one minor, have died at Israeli military checkpoints following a delay in receiving medical care.
    A Palestinian woman who had been walking for over half an hour between roadblocks to get to a nearby hospital said such incidents were common.
    "You see how it is. I am on my way to the doctor. I can barely walk on my own two legs. No situation is worse than this. Our young people are all stuck at home and the sick die on their way to the hospitals," Hebron resident Muzain Abu Turki said.
    Walking to school through the roadblocks has also become an ordeal for many of the West Bank's children.
    "It is a difficult world here. Especially for children on their way to and from school. During the winter it is cold and their boots get wet and covered in mud. And during the summer it is too hot. It is difficult," Um Arij, a resident of Beit Ummar, said.
    Israel's implements its closure policy on the West Bank using the barrier, a mix of wire fencing and concrete walls up to 18 feet (5.5 metres) high, and checkpoints, settlements, roads to be used by Jewish settlers only, prohibitions on Palestinian movement in the Jordan valley and a regime of permits for internal movement.
    Israel says the travel restrictions and the barrier are meant to stop Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching its cities.
    About 270,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank among some 2.5 million Palestinians. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that settlements built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War are illegal.
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