Israel Approves Removal of West Bank Checkpoints

[oberliner]

JERUSALEM, Dec. 25 Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, acting on a pledge to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, today approved the removal of more than two dozen military checkpoints in the West Bank that have severely restricted Palestinian movements.

Mr. Olmert also said Israel would take immediate steps to improve the flow of goods in and out of the Gaza Strip. The main crossing point has often been closed this year, stifling commerce in the impoverished coastal territory.

The Israeli moves are part of a package of concessions Mr. Olmert presented to Mr. Abbas when the two leaders held talks Saturday night, their first official meeting since Mr. Olmert became prime minister early this year. Israel says it is trying to boost Mr. Abbas, who is from the Fatah movement, in his power struggle with Hamas, the radical Islamic group that controls most of the Palestinian government.

While the gestures point to the prospect of improved relations between the two leaders, the Israelis and Palestinians still have many smaller issues to deal with before they are likely to consider full-fledged peace talks, which broke down almost six years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/world/middleeast/25cnd-mideast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Trajan]

1. Now it's time to praise ....

THANK YOU ISRAEL for this opening step towards peace ....

I am normally quite critical of Israel, primarily because I reject it's right wing personality of late, and what I considered a headlong race into meanness and pessimistic war .... But now it would be proper to give them credit for the positive steps, and so : thanks ....

Now let's make sure they get ALL the resources that were taken away so they can at least resume their subsistence existence again .... And further: Begin COMPREHENSIVE peace talks, including a rational Hamas having a seat at the table, and the ultimate acceptance of 1) The Existence of the State of Israel 2) Respect for the PRE-1967 borders, and acceptance of the removal of POST-1967 settlements 3) a TRUE armistice between the parties involved 4) Decent compensation for the loss of arab areas and properties within Israel .... Right of return wouldnt be necessary IF reasonable compensation were offered and accepted. and 5) Palestinians need to find acceptance within the Arab world, and those arab states with refugee populations may have to find a way to naturalize and accept as citizens those refugees in situ ....

Workable ? .... Im a dreamer .... not all would ever stand up, but SOME comprimise could be found ...

Again .. THANKS to Israel for doing good ...

[Igel]

2. Most of the checkpoints, I believe, remain.

Let's not get *too* carried away with the good will. :-)

[msmcghee]

3. Yeah, let's not get carried away . .

. . praising the Israelis for steps that improve life for the Palestinians.

Instead, we should be thanking the Palestinians for only firing 50 rockets into Israel since the cease fire began.

:sarcasm: - applies to all of above.

[Kagemusha]

5. It's miniscule but it's something. (Israel's steps that is)

and just so no one assumes otherwise, the rocket firing into Israel is bad/ dumb/ provocative.

[msmcghee]

6. You did see my . .

. . :sarcasm: emoticon, didn't you?

:thumbsup:

[Kagemusha]

7. Ah, no, I did not...

Was it added in the edit? Anyway, happy holidays, take care.

[msmcghee]

9. My best to you and yours.

The same to all DU members.

I really believe everyone here believes in justice and peace - we just see a different picture when we try to figure out how to reach that.

[Igel]

11. I'm not saying it's bad.

It's a good thing. It's just that it's a very, very small, and completely reversible step. I understand why people object to them; I understand why they're there.

We see it as a potential big deal; I'm less than certain that Palestinians on the ground care one way or the other that a couple dozen checkpoints are gone, with a couple hundred left.

I wish I could find the Lebanese proverb I ran across a month or so ago, it went something like "You don't give thanks for what you're owed."

[Trajan]

8. Baby steps deserve praise .......

[wellst0nev0ter]

4. Will Mary And Joseph

still face 10 checkpoints on the trail from Nazareth to Bethlehem?

[breakaleg]

10. Baby steps: they will remove 27 checkpoints out of 500.

[Englander]

12. But when?

Reading the small print;

'The first step will be to increase the volume of goods passing through crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The Karni crossing, the main terminal for supplies going to and from Gaza, has been closed for days or even weeks at a time over the past year.

While food, medicine and other essential goods are allowed into Gaza, Palestinians say it has been impossible to conduct commerce on anything resembling a normal basis. Hundreds of tons of Palestinian agricultural products rotted because they could not be exported from Gaza.

Israel has cited security concerns for closing the crossing, which has been attacked several times in recent years.

In the second stage of Mr. Olmert’s plan, Israel’s military will remove 27 West Bank checkpoints, though Israeli officials did not give the exact locations or say when this would happen.

If checkpoints come down on heavily traveled main roads inside the West Bank, it could remove or at least reduce a source of great frustration for the Palestinians. Palestinians say they can easily spend an hour or more in line daily when making relatively short commutes to jobs and schools inside the West Bank.'

[Englander]

13. Love the framing in this article -

Olmert deciding to end the policy of collective punishment, by opening Karni, the essential trade
terminal for Gaza, is a "concession". The removal of military checkpoints in the West Bank, or at
least the approval of said removal, the actual removal not actually having happened yet, is a "concession".

[Tom Joad]

14. There are 400 checkpoints in the West Bank. All severely restrict Palestinian freedom of movement.

They also severely disrupt the Palestinian economy.

I don't think the absence of a couple dozen of these is going to make a great deal of difference.

The headline the NY Times used is deceptive. It would give the impression that all the checkpoints were being removed. Much the same way as the promise to "remove West Bank Settlements" by olmert. Never has there been any promise that any but a handful of the illegal settlements will be removed from the West Bank, yet the headlines always read "West Bank Settlements to be removed".

All this reminds me of the chocolate ration in the book "1984".
Big Brother raised the ration of chocolate from 20 to 30 grams a week. The people were grateful.
Nevermind that the chocolate ration was 40 grams a week last month.


Palestinians and human rights supporters are supposed to be grateful for this? While Palestinian children are hungry? After 40 years of illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? I think the international community should demand more of Israel.

[breakaleg]

15. I had someone explain to me that yes, they should be grateful for such miniscule concessions and

even give something back in return.

[Englander]

16. Haaretz article -

The temples of the occupation
By Meron Benvenisti

So far, of the dozens of checkpoints promised to be removed from the West Bank in a "gesture" to Mahmoud Abbas, not a single checkpoint has been dismantled.

It will be interesting to see what excuse they come up with after the weather improves. The plan to remove the roadblocks has been delayed over some excuse or another for several years, and in the meantime their number has multiplied. We can assume with reasonable certainty that the newest attempt to ease the lives of the Palestinians will fail like its predecessors, because the regime of roadblocks is not a matter of a marginal gesture, nor a matter of quantity, whose reduction is likely to signal change in the situation prevailing in the occupied territories. Instead, the roadblocks are the foundation of Israeli control of the West Bank, and they fulfill three major roles: symbolic, geo-strategic and socio-political. Therefore anyone who attributes only tactical-security or settlement-dependent significance to them is missing the point.

In this respect, the IDF officers (who sabotage any effort to remove obstructions) are more faithful to Israel's basic perception than are the prime minister and the defense minister, who are using the roadblocks as a short-term political means. The hundreds of permanent and mobile roadblocks, the constructed and improvised ones, the cement blocks and the revolving gates, the mounds of earth and the ditches, are all designed for one purpose: to show who has the power to control the lives of the Palestinians. Small groups of young, inexperienced and frightened soldiers serve as the agents of the power that forces millions of people to behave according to arbitrary rules that interrupt the most basic routines of their lives. This domination is implemented for the most part without any need for force, by exploiting the fear of the Palestinians.

The disdain for the Palestinians and the arrogant use of a mentality of submissiveness is reflected not only by the roadblocks themselves but by the checking procedures, which are conducted without any sensitivity to the dignity and needs of the Palestinians, who are expected to wait in line in silence or else be "punished." Colonial regimes have always been based on the arrogance of a small number of soldiers who controlled the lives of million of natives with minimal force, and a dependence on deterrence, which guaranteed the inferior status of those subject to their authority.

>snip

The roadblocks serve as a first-class geo-strategic means: They institutionalize the expropriation of the physical space and the public infrastructure of the West Bank and their transference to the exclusive use of the Israelis. The map of the hundreds of roadblocks erected in Palestinian populated areas outlines the physical division of the West Bank into areas west of the separation fence that have been annexed de facto, and the Jordan Valley that has been cut off from its surroundings, and 10 Palestinian enclaves from Jenin in the North to Mt. Hebron in the South.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/806575.html

[Englander]

17. Has there been any progress on this?

I was wondering whether this planned removal of military checkpoints in the OPT has happened, yet?

[Tom Joad]

18. The newspaper headline is so deceptive anyway.

There is no intention to remove most of the hundreds of checkpoints that destroy Palestinian life.

If they get around to ending a few... a month later more will pop up. Probably end up with more than they had originally.