JERUSALEM // The construction of sections of a controversial
segregated road network in the West Bank planned by Israel for Palestinians –
leaving the main roads for exclusive use by settlers – is being financed by a US
government aid agency, a map prepared by Palestinian researchers has revealed.
USAid, which funds development projects in
Palestinian areas, is reported to have helped to build 114km of Israeli-proposed
roads, despite a pledge from Washington six years ago that it would not assist
in implementing what has been widely described by human rights groups and the
Israeli media as Israel’s “apartheid road” plan.
To date the agency has paid for the construction of nearly a
quarter of the segregated road network put forward by Israel in 2004, said the
Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ).
The roads are designed to provide alternative routes to connect
Palestinian communities, often by upgrading circuitious dirt tracks or by
building tunnels under existing routes.
Meanwhile, according to human rights groups, Israel has reserved
an increasing number of main roads in the West Bank for Israelis so that Jewish
settlers can drive more easily and quickly into Israel, making their illegal
communities more attractive places to live.
The US agency’s involvement in building a segregated West Bank
road infrastructure would run counter to Washington’s oft-stated goal, including
as it launched “proximity talks” last week, to establish a viable Palestinian
state with territorial contiguity.
“The displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank’s main roads
improves the appeal of the settlements by better integrating them into Israel,”
said Suheil Khalilieh, the head of settlement monitoring at ARIJ. “Conversely,
creating an inferior, alternative network of local roads makes travel between
the main regions of the West Bank difficult and time-consuming for
Palestinians.”
Israel proposed the creation of two separate road systems in
2004, after many of the West Bank’s main roads had been sealed off to
Palestinians following the outbreak of the second intifada.
Ariel Sharon, the then-prime minister, argued that segregated
infrastructure would create “contiguity of transportation” for Palestinians and
help to alleviate economic hardship resulting from hundreds of roadblocks and
checkpoints that restrict Palestinian movement.
The international community was asked to finance 500km of roads
for the Palestinians, later termed “fabric of life” roads, including upgrading
agricultural tracks and constructing many underpasses and bridges, at a cost of
US$200 million (Dh730m).
The Palestinian Authority, however, objected, saying the plan
would further entrench the illegal settlements in the West Bank and justify
confiscating yet more Palestinian land for the new roads.
That position was backed by international donors, including the
US, which declared it would not finance any road projects against the PA’s will.
Despite the US promise, however, a map of the West Bank recently
published by ARIJ shows that 23 per cent of the “alternative” road network
Israel proposed has been built with USAid money.
Many of these roads are located in so-called Areas B and C, more
than 80 per cent of the West Bank that was assigned to Israeli security control
by the Oslo accords. Israel oversees all road projects in these areas.
Mr Khalilieh said the PA was being effectively bullied into
conceding the road infrastructure wanted by Israel.
“What happens is that USAid presents a package deal of donations
for infrastructure projects in the West Bank and the Palestinians are faced with
a choice of take it or leave it. That way the PA is cornered into accepting
roads it does not want.”
He said some roads were also being approved because of a lack of
oversight by the PA. An inter-ministerial committee to vet proposed roads to
ensure they did not contribute to the Israeli plan had been inactive since 2006,
he said, following the split between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian
elections.
After PA officials were presented with ARIJ’s map, Salam Fayyad,
the Palestinian prime minister, issued a statement last weekend denying that the
PA had contributed to the Israeli-proposed road network.
However, in a sign that such reassurances were unlikely to dampen
concerns, he reconvened the inter-ministerial committee to conduct field vists
to check on road projects that had been carried out or were in progress.
Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian government
spokesman and a former planning minister, said the PA was taking the issue “very
seriously” and was doing everything possible to resist the emergence of an
“apartheid system” in the West Bank.
He added that, if roads were being built that served the
settlers’ interests, “that is not supposed to happen”.
According to USAid’s figures, it has financed 235km of roads in
the West Bank in the past decade, and is preparing to add another 120km by the
end of this year.
Critics add that in some cases the upgrading by USAid of minor
roads, even those not included in the Israeli plan, has worked to the same end
of keeping Palestinians off the West Bank’s main highways.
USAid officials were unavailable for
comment.
Among roads for Palestinians funded by USAid are several projects
south of Bethlehem that appear to be providing an “alternative” to Road 60, a
busy highway that has traditionally linked Jerusalem with the Palestinian cities
of Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank.
Israel has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to Road 60
because it also serves as a fast direct route for Jewish settlers in the Gush
Etzion bloc driving to and from Jerusalem.
As a result, residents of several nearby Palestinian villages,
including Batir, Wadi Fukin, al Walaja and Husan, have been forced off Road 60
and on to USAid-funded side roads and underpasses to connect them to Bethlehem
and other neighbouring communities.
Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem,
an Israeli human rights group, said 170km of roads in the West Bank were either
off-limits to Palestinians or highly restricted, creating what the organisation
has called “forbidden roads”.
B’Tselem noted that, after the 2004 scheme
for complete separation was rejected by donors, Israel adapted the plan, using
bridges, tunnels and interchanges to create partial separation, with Israelis
“traveling on the fast upper levels, and Palestinians on the lower levels”. It
concluded: “The plan allows Palestinian vehicles to travel on only 20 per cent
of the [West Bank] roads on which Israeli vehicles travel.”
Ms Michaeli added that the growing dependence of Palestinian
traffic on underpasses meant that Israel was in a position to control or even
sever connections between Palestinian areas with only one military jeep.
Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, the director of Badil, a Bethlehem-based
organisation that has lobbied against road segregation in the southern West
Bank, said there was considerable domestic and international pressure on the PA
to agree to roads dictated by Israel, if only because they often eased the
existing restrictions on Palestinian movement.
“Sadly, the PA is helping to build its own Bantustans,” she said.
“Palestinian towns and villages connected by back roads and tunnels while the
settlers control the main highways is what the US appears to mean when it talks
about a viable Palestinian state.”
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