TULKARM - Driving through the rolling hills of the West Bank has become a nerve-racking, and sometimes deadly, venture for Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
Motorists ignore the scenery, their eyes flicking nervously around for gunmen lying in ambush or hostile checkpoints.
Palestinians feel hemmed in by Israeli roadblocks that dot the territory they want for an independent state and threatened by militant Jewish settlers who claim the same land.
Khaled Najjar, aged 42, a Palestinian shopkeeper, said he and his wife were too frightened to make the half-hour drive from his home in Tulkarm to Nablus, both in the West Bank. Two bullets fired by Jewish settlers hit their car last week.
"We live in a big prison. We cannot move. We cannot see friends and relatives," Najjar said.
According to the LAW Society, a Palestinian affiliate of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least eight civilians on West Bank roads during a four-month-old Palestinian revolt.
The Israeli Army says its troops shoot only when their lives are in danger or when they are fired on.
Palestinian gunmen, who demand the removal of Jewish settlements, illegal in international law, have killed at least nine Israeli motorists, mostly Jewish settlers, including a settler ambushed on a road near Ramallah on Monday.
At least 313 Palestinians, 49 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the uprising against Israeli occupation.
Israeli police say they are investigating complaints from Palestinian police about settler attacks on Palestinians and about lengthy delays for Palestinians at military checkpoints.
Majed Hassan, a 35-year-old Ramallah resident, said he thought twice before driving to Hebron to visit his married sister because avoiding Israeli settlers and checkpoints involved a tortuous journey on unpaved back roads.
Last week a Palestinian woman whose husband was driving her to hospital gave birth while Israeli soldiers delayed them at a roadblock near the village of Umm Safa, hospital sources said.
They said Amina Musa and her baby finally reached hospital "in critical condition."
Citing security reasons, Israel has clamped an internal closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the uprising began, banning the movement of people and goods on main roads.
Palestinians often take to dirt roads to circumvent what they call a "siege" that has crippled economic activity and made life miserable for more than three million Palestinians.
- REUTERS
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Keeping eyes on the road not enough in the West Bank
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