Israel Keeping All Palestinians at Bay

A military closure so draconian that it has nearly brought life to a halt for millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip remained in place Tuesday, four days after a suicide bomber killed himself and 20 others outside a Tel Aviv nightclub.

The closure, announced Saturday by the Israeli government, bans Palestinians and their commercial products from entering Israel. It has seriously disrupted life for the 3 million people who live in the West Bank and Gaza.

Until Tuesday, the closure also involved a ban on Israeli products entering Palestinian-controlled areas. Late in the day, however, the Defense Ministry announced that deliveries of Israeli food and fuel would be resumed today. Palestinians trapped in Jordan and Egypt when the closure began also will be allowed to return to their homes.

The ministry statement cited “a significant reduction in the number of [anti-Israeli] attacks” since Saturday as reason for the partial easing of restrictions.

But the bulk of measures taken after the bombing were still in effect. Even Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat has been affected by the closure. Israeli media have reported that he has been unable to obtain Israeli permission to fly from Ramallah to his Gaza headquarters. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that no “official” request had been received from Arafat but that one would be processed if he submitted it.

Matan Vilnai, Israel’s minister of culture, science and sports, was more blunt. Asked by reporters about restricting Arafat’s movement, Vilnai said the Palestinian leader must learn to uphold the 1993 peace accord he signed with Israel.

“The state of Israel allowed Arafat to return to the territories [in 1994] not so that he could shoot at us from here--for this he could have stayed in Tunis,” Vilnai said. “But he chose to come back here, and he must abide by the rules.”

In addition to keeping Palestinians out of Israel, the army has cut the West Bank into pieces, blocking roads and erecting checkpoints that are preventing most Palestinians from moving between population centers. Palestinians say the closures have made it nearly impossible for schools, government agencies, businesses and public institutions to function.

“Our whole medical system could just collapse,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a physician and political activist who detailed at a news conference the impact the closure is having. Doctors and hospital workers, he said, cannot get to work because of the many road closures.

“Why is it justified, in response to one particular incident, to punish a whole population?” he asked.

The closure represents an about-face in the policy followed by Sharon and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of trying to “separate the terrorists from the general population,” acknowledged Lt. Col. Moshe Karif, spokesman for the army’s civil administration office in the West Bank and Gaza.

“Until this terrible event,” Karif said, referring to Friday night’s bombing, “there were more than 21,000 workers working in Israel and 2,000 businessmen regularly going into Israel. We were willing to take the calculated risk that the equivalent of a Timothy McVeigh might be entering the state every day.”

After the bombing, Karif said, the government’s fear of alienating the broad Palestinian population was overshadowed by its need to restore security.

“The state of Israel has to guarantee the safety of its people,” he added. “This is not a policy that will last forever, and we examine it every day. But this is the policy today.”

For many Palestinians, the closure has reduced lives that were already maddeningly difficult to nearly impossible. A tour of West Bank towns north and south of Jerusalem on Tuesday showed empty streets in many places along with shuttered shops, businesses and restaurants. Traffic was snarled at key crossing points.

At the Al Ram junction on the main road north from Jerusalem to Ramallah, the few Palestinians who tried to cross into or out of Israel waited for an hour or more to get to checkpoints, where soldiers often studied their identification papers and turned them back.

Many simply got out of vehicles and walked several hundred yards through the choking dust and diesel fumes to cross checkpoints. Old women carried bags of groceries on their heads. Mothers cradling babies in their arms and trailed by older children trudged over earthen barricades or around concrete blocks to get to jobs or doctor’s appointments or grocery stores.

“I had to go from my village near Ramallah to Ramallah today to see the doctor,” said a 40-year-old teacher who gave only his first name, Mohammed. “It usually is a 10-minute car ride. Today, it took me two hours to get to the hospital, and now I am trying to get back home. This is the worst the closure has ever been.”

On the north side of Ramallah, the road that leads to Bir Zeit University has been blocked by soldiers since Saturday. Students and troops clashed Tuesday at the blockade.

Defiant students said they had climbed nearby hills to get around the roadblock, which the Israelis had reinforced with a tank on the road and one on the hill above. The students walked until they found taxis, only to discover that classes were canceled Tuesday because teachers couldn’t make it in from surrounding villages and towns.

“We’ll just keep coming,” said Mohammed Dahlan, a 21-year-old chemistry student. “We have exams to finish. We just want to finish our education.”

On the south side of Jerusalem, outside the town of Beit Jala, a huffing, puffing Bushra Butma was glad to drop her bags of groceries on the road and talk about how the routine trip from her village to the town and back has turned into a nightmarish experience.

She makes what used to be a 10-minute trip each way only when she must, said Butma, 33. The trip now takes an hour each way, and she can’t be certain the soldiers will even let her through the checkpoint.

“I must go every two or three days,” she said. “We only go for the important things. We don’t take babies to the doctor. We only do the things that cannot be delayed, like buy food, and then we only buy what is absolutely necessary because we cannot carry so much.”

On Tuesday, Butma said, she bought the meat and fruit she needed but decided to do without vegetables because she just didn’t think she’d be able to carry them.