Israel’s Blockades in West Bank Tighten Vise on Palestinians

Tightening its blockade of Palestinian areas, the Israeli army has torn up one of the newest roads in the West Bank, in effect closing the premier Palestinian institution of higher education and cutting off access to work and medical care for tens of thousands of villagers.

Palestinians say the closure of the road between Ramallah and Birzeit, the town that is the site of Birzeit University, is the clearest evidence yet that Israel’s new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is increasing pressure on them to halt a 5-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In addition to closing the road, the Israeli army Sunday encircled Ramallah--the economic and cultural center for Palestinians in the West Bank--with tanks and beefed-up patrols, making travel difficult if not impossible for many people.

Last week, the army isolated the ancient town of Jericho by digging a 10-mile-long trench along its eastern flank. Blockades also have been imposed on Janin in the northern part of the West Bank.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo called for international condemnation of Israel’s latest “siege,” which he said was turning entire cities “into prisons and detention camps.”

An Israeli army spokesman said the blockade was intended only to prevent Palestinian militants from carrying out their threats to launch terror attacks inside Israel and against its settlements.

The tightening of the closure appears to signal Sharon’s strategy for combating the Palestinian uprising. Despite recent statements suggesting that he was inclined to ease the suffering of civilians, the army seems to be doing the opposite.

This approach allows Sharon to avoid a military escalation that would invite international scrutiny and possibly condemnation, and instead chip away at the economy, infrastructure and ability of Palestinians to live normal lives. It is a less dramatic but more insidious way of fighting the Palestinian uprising, analysts here say, and appears designed to drive a wedge between average Palestinians and their leaders, as well as the Palestinian armed militia and the less militant business and political elite.

Even Israeli analysts have warned that Sharon’s strategy could backfire by causing wider sections of the Palestinian public to join the uprising, which so far has claimed about 420 lives, most of them Palestinian.

The closure of the road to Birzeit may be having that effect. Since the intifada began in late September, Birzeit students have sat on the sidelines while it raged across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where about 3 million Palestinians live. The inaction so far contrasts starkly with the response in 1987, when Birzeit students provided much of the leadership for the uprising.

But today, hundreds of Birzeit’s 5,000 students, who were expected to resume classes Wednesday, will join faculty, school administrators and residents in a march from Ramallah to demand that the roadway be repaired and reopened, said Birzeit University President Hanna Nasir.

“This closure is going to energize everyone,” Nasir said. “It is a rape of the land, and it’s only going to cause more trouble for the army.”

The seven-mile stretch of road linking Birzeit to Ramallah was completed only last year and is one of the proudest achievements of Palestinian rule. It cost $4 million, a portion of which was borrowed from the World Bank and the remainder donated by South Korea and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Neighboring towns and 33 nearby villages, home to 200,000 residents, use the thoroughfare to get to and from hospitals, businesses and cultural centers in Ramallah.

Nasir and others said they were surprised to learn Friday that the army had ripped up the asphalt and dug deep trenches at two points on the roadway, preventing cars from traveling along a quarter-mile stretch in the village of Surda. Before the roadblock, there had been no clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops or settlers along the roadway--unlike in areas in and around Ramallah.

“They want to make life so unpleasant for all of us, but especially for the Palestinians, so we’ll all want to go somewhere else and live,” said Chivvis Moore, a San Francisco native who teaches English at Birzeit. “This is a crime. This is not about Israeli security, it’s about making sure the Palestinian people feel big doses of pain.”

Sunday, scenes from the roadblock showed how everyday Palestinian life was being affected.

Paramedics from Birzeit stopped their ambulance at one of the trenches, loaded a young woman who needed dialysis at a Ramallah hospital onto a stretcher, and then carried her across the quarter-mile stretch to an ambulance waiting on the other side.

An old man with a cane carried a bag of pita bread and another bag stuffed with clothes as he crossed the same stretch, sometimes keeping an eye on two Israeli tanks and an army jeep perched on a nearby hilltop. Another man toted the top half of a car engine. Taxis waited for customers on the Birzeit side of the roadblock.

An Israeli army spokesman said the soldiers closed the road not to target the university, but to prevent Palestinian militants who shoot at settlements near Ramallah from getting back safely to their villages.

“‘It is not punishment or retaliation,” the spokesman said.

On Sunday, the army also clamped down on Palestinians entering Israel.

Soldiers set up a roadblock near the Kalandia refugee camp, south of Ramallah, to check identification papers of Palestinians entering the Jerusalem area. Traffic backed up for more than a mile. The trip from Ramallah to Jerusalem, which under normal conditions takes about 20 minutes, took as long as two hours. Many Palestinians abandoned their taxis and went back home. Others walked to the other side of the checkpoint and boarded waiting taxis.

Soldiers in an armored vehicle trained their guns on Palestinian youths preparing to throw stones.

Wahid Ahmad, a 30-year-old resident of Kalandia, said the full effects of the closure will be felt in a few days.

“This place is like a bottle filled with chemicals,” he said. “If you fill it to the top, then cork it and heat the bottom, it’s certain to explode.”

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.