Ramallah, 03-01-08: A statement by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday that all roadblocks in the West Bank are to remain firmly in place is “yet another indication of Israel’s lack of commitment to achieving peace and its determination to continue dictating a fait accompli on the ground” said PNI Secretary General, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP today.
“These checkpoints form the backbone of the Apartheid system Israel has created out of its occupation, characterised by systematic discrimination against Palestinians ranging from denying their right to freedom of movement, to charging them twice the price paid by Israelis for basic utilities,” he added.
Barak has a stubborn commitment to maintaining Israel’s network of roadblocks in the West Bank. In October 2007, he claimed during talks in Washington that Israel had lifted 24 roadblocks in the West Bank. Yet shortly afterwards, this was exposed as deception by the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, which revealed on 15 November 2007 that only two of the 24 roadblocks that Israel claimed to have removed were in fact removed, and that many had never existed to begin with.
Barak’s brazen refusal comes just weeks after the Annapolis peace meeting where Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert declared in his speech that Israel will abide by all its commitments under the Roadmap, the same Roadmap which calls on Israel to ease movement restrictions on persons and goods.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has cited movement restrictions, of which there were 563 permanent and some 296 temporary in November 2007, as “a primary cause of poverty and the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
World leaders reiterated calls for Israel to ease movement restrictions in the interest of shoring up the beleaguered Palestinian economy at the recent Paris Donor Conference in December 2007. A World Bank report prepared for the conference also states that a “confluence of factors, including […] Israeli restrictions on movement and access since the Second Intifada […] have placed an already-fragile Palestinian economy in a downward cycle of crisis and dependence” and have fragmented it into “disconnected cantons.”
The report goes on to say that in order to be successful, commitments foreseen under the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan 2008-10 must be fully supported by “the relaxation of the closure regime,” and that without “changes in the movement and access restrictions, total real growth will continue to be negative, averaging around -2%, during the period 2008-2012.”
Dr. Barghouthi concluded that “Barak’s move guarantees that any efforts to boost the Palestinian economy will fail. But this is about more than undercutting the development of the Palestinian economy. By maintaining its matrix of movement restrictions, Israel is furthering its long-term plan to prevent the creation of a viable, contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state. Until the international community actively obliges Israel to end its occupation and dismantle its Apartheid system, the cards of peace will remain in Israel’s hands only.”