(Updated: Originally published November 18, 2006)
Courtesy of Israel.
Just a brief snapshot of the slow, steady progression that constitutes Israel's ethnic cleansing.
As you read this, ask yourself why Palestinians are not more violent considering the crap they have to endure from the Zionist terror state.
"For West Bank, It’s a Highway to Frustration" by GREG MYRE
ROAD 60, West Bank, Nov. 14 — For four years, the separation barrier Israel has been building just inside the West Bank boundary has drawn protests from Palestinians and international censure for the hardship it imposes on their movement and access to jobs and land.
But getting much less notice have been parallel and perhaps even more restrictive measures imposed by the Israeli military much deeper inside the West Bank. The internal checkpoints and barriers on roads have increasingly limited movement, something Palestinians say they find especially grating, because they are not trying to enter Israel, only to go from one Palestinian area to another.
That's the plan! Carve 'em up into Bantustans so you can annihilate them.
A Greater Israel, remember, and the Palestinians are only standing in the way.
A reporter and a photographer for The New York Times examined the daily friction between Palestinian civilians and Israeli soldiers on a two-day, 75-mile trip along Road 60, the main north-south highway that runs along the hilly spine of the West Bank.
In one of the more sweeping restrictions, men under 35 from the northern West Bank are generally not allowed to leave the area. The rules often change, but this one has been enforced most days for the last four months, Palestinians say.
Hakim Abu Shamli, 40, an electrical engineer who lives in Tubas near the city of Nablus. For years his commute to work was a 20-minute taxi ride. Now he leaves home at 5:30 a.m. to reach his job by 8, and he is often late.
Mr. Abu Shamli, during a two-hour delay at a teeming checkpoint:
"My main job now is waiting in line.”
David Shearer, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which monitors the West Bank:
“We’re seeing an increasing fragmentation of the West Bank. The whole fabric of life for the Palestinians has been disrupted.”
The obstacles have effectively divided the West Bank into three sectors — northern, central and southern — and limited movement among them.
Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the government department that deals with the Palestinians:
“We know these measures harm the quality of life of the Palestinians, but they save the lives of Israelis.”
Translation: Palestinian lives are WORTHLESS, while Israeli lives are PRECIOUS!
Wouldn't Hitler be proud of you, Israel!
Palestinians must make their way through dozens of military checkpoints, delayed for hours, rerouted to dirt roads and sometimes turned back altogether on their way to jobs, schools and family visits. They also face earth mounds, concrete blocks and trenches that have cut many roads, forcing lengthy detours.
And it worsens every day!
Mutie Milhem, 33, a taxi driver near Jenin who had just endured a lengthy wait at a checkpoint:
“I used to work as a laborer in Israel. When that became difficult, I thought it would be easier to be a driver in the West Bank. But every day here becomes harder. We never know what we are going to face.”
Israel has increasingly isolated Jenin. The town’s economy has been hit hard, and the main taxi stand overflows with frustrated drivers working their way through packs of cheap cigarettes. The drivers wait, sometimes for a day or more, before they are called to take passengers outside Jenin.
By the western entrance to Nablus, at the Beit Iba checkpoint where Mr. Abu Shamli, the engineer, was stuck, the Israeli soldiers grew angry as the Palestinian crowd began bunching around them. The soldiers began confiscating identity documents as a punishment, though they later returned them.
I can't believe it! No way those nice Jewish boys would get angry!
Jews would never punish Muslims -- unless they deserve it!
They are the most professional military in the world -- or so I'm told -- and we all know anger is solely a Muslim trait.
They are angry night and day, always planning and plotting terror attacks, lurking just out of view.
In the northern West Bank, jobs are extremely scarce and the movement restriction on men under 35 has made it virtually impossible for them to look elsewhere in the West Bank for work. University students, most of them commuters, also face a tough time with changing rules.
Ala Suboh, 21, an engineering student at Al Najah University in Nablus:
“Sometimes I can’t make it to the university. Other times I make it but I’m not allowed to leave the city and have to spend the night on the floor of a friend’s house.”
Palestinians must go through turnstiles and metal detectors, while soldiers work on computers in glass booths. It takes an hour or more to pass during the morning and evening rush hours. Cars cannot pass unless they have permits from Israel.
Israel does not allow the vast majority of West Bank Palestinians to enter Jerusalem. In the 1990s, Israel rerouted parts of Road 60 so that it looped around some Palestinian towns. Those bypasses allowed Jewish settlers to travel the West Bank without having to go through Palestinian towns.
The center of Hebron is ghostly quiet. Aside from occasional pedestrians, the only activity consists of Israeli security forces patrolling near the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
Several hundred Jewish settlers live in the city. Israel has imposed some of its most severe restrictions on roughly 30,000 Palestinians who used to live in the center; many have moved out, at least temporarily.
It's called ETHNIC CLEANSING, folks!
Moving Palestinians out and moving Jews in, and it NEVER STOPS!
Let's hear from a couple more Palestinians:
Gabriel Jacoman, 50, was raised in a house on Road 60 as it enters Bethlehem. In 1994 he opened a chicken restaurant that thrived by serving the tourists who came from Jerusalem to visit the tomb of Rachel, the biblical matriarch.
Today his home and neighboring restaurant, now shuttered, are sandwiched between 25-foot concrete walls built across Road 60. One wall is several hundred yards north of his home. The second wall is a few paces south of his front door.
Mr. Jacoman: “This was the road everyone took from Jerusalem to the southern West Bank. Now you can’t take it in either direction.”
Talib Karaki, 50, lives with more than 100 members of his extended family in a two-house compound near the tomb.
Last month Mr. Karaki’s 3-year-old grandson, Walid, picked up gravel and started tossing it toward a soldier at the checkpoint, Mr. Karaki said. The soldier came to complain, and a big argument ensued:
“The whole area is completely dead. The whole thing was ridiculous. But it shows how crazy our life has become.”
I'm flabbergasted by the bravery, will and sheer endurance of the Palestinian people to just survive.
The conditions they accept are nearly unimaginable to me.
My love and sympathies are extended to them.
