KEY POINTS:
The Israeli authorities have been ordered by the High Court to give a formal explanation of why a key highway running from Jerusalem through the occupied West Bank has been barred to Palestinians living in the area.
The High Court yesterday ruled that the state - in this instance the Israeli military - has to explain why Route 443 is, in practice, barred to Palestinians, and why road blocks preventing access to the road from Palestinian villages along the route have not been dismantled.
The ruling follows a petition against the almost 7-year-old de facto ban by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel on behalf of the 25,000 residents of six Palestinian villages near the road who are forced to use poor and lengthy back roads rather than a main road through the West Bank towards Ramallah, which had served them since the British mandate.
The petition goes to the heart of the heavy restrictions on Palestinian movement and access in much of the West Bank, graphically illustrated in a UN map showing road closures and territory - around 40 per cent of the West Bank - which is either barred or heavily restricted for Palestinians seeking to enter it, severing the different sectors of the West Bank from each other, and from Jerusalem.
Controversy over route 443 intensified after the daily paper Haaretz discovered there was no specific legal order underpinning the ban.
The Ministry of Defence said at the time the road was open to Palestinians who passed inspection at checkpoints at either end of the relevant stretch but this, in practice, applies only to drivers with special permits.
Feeder roads are almost invariably blocked with boulders, concrete blocks or iron gates.
After ACRI applied to the military for the route to be opened to Palestinians, officials in its civil administration offered the council head at one of the villages, Beit Sira, transit permits for some taxi owners.
The head, Al Abu Tsafaya insisted that the road be opened to all residents, as it had historically been, and there have been no further meetings.
Route 443 is relatively unusual among restricted West Bank main roads as it is used by West Bank settlers and large volumes of Israeli traffic travelling through occupied territory to and from Israel proper.
Until now, the military has justified the ban on "security grounds" without spelling out the detailed legal or practical basis for it.
The ban was imposed at the beginning of the intifada, during the subsequent peak of which Israeli vehicles using the route were sometimes attacked with gunfire and rocks.
Yoav Loeff, spokesman for ACRI, said the association was not ignoring security considerations but that the Army had ample alternative means to enforce security without operating a blanket ban which violated the international legal rights of the original users of the route.
He said the residents were forced to use routes which were much longer, sometimes dangerous, and more costly for those using taxis. "It makes the movement of goods more costly so has an economic effect and it can endanger life for emergency cases who may take an hour to get to hospital instead of 15 minutes," he added.
"We do not use the word apartheid in court but it is difficult to find another term for roads that can be used only for Israelis."
- INDEPENDENT
