Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La Bantustan Cis-Giordana

Questa mappa:
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2007/01/blog-post_19.html
http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/2871/232/1600/151616/aaaaa.gif
prodotta dall'Onu, (OCHA, ufficio per gli affari umanitari dell'ONU)
illustra la liberta' di movimento nei diversi distretti della
cis-Giordania.
GT

 prodotta dall'Onu, (OCHA, ufficio per gli affari umanitari dell'ONU)
Prodotta dall'ONU .... un par de balle!
Questa e' la mappa prodotta da OCHA
http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/OCHA/OCHAoPt_ClosureAnalysis0106_En.pdf
Pag. 2
-Stefano

From The Economist print edition
Those seemingly minor inconveniences that make life hellish
DURING 2006, according to B'tselem, an Israeli human-rights group,
Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, almost half of them innocent
bystanders, among them 141 children. In the same period, Palestinians
killed 17 Israeli civilians and six soldiers. It is such figures, as
well as events like shellings, house demolitions, arrest raids and land
expropriations, that make the headlines in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. What rarely get into the media but make up the staple of
Palestinian daily conversation are the countless little restrictions
that slow down most people's lives, strangle the economy and provide
constant fuel for extremists.
Arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules. No
one can predict how a trip will go. Many of the main West Bank roads,
for the sake of the security of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, are
off-limits to Palestinian vehicles-only one road connecting the north
and south West Bank, for instance, is open to them-and these
restrictions change frequently. So do the rules on who can pass the
checkpoints that in effect divide the West Bank into a number of
semi-connected regions (see map).
A new order due to come into force this week would have banned most
West Bankers from riding in cars with Israeli licence plates, and thus
from getting lifts from friends and relatives among the 1.6m
Palestinians who live as citizens in Israel, as well as from aid
workers, journalists and other foreigners. The army decided to suspend
the order after protests from human-rights groups that it would give
soldiers enormous arbitrary powers-but it has not revoked it.
Large parts of the population of the northern West Bank, and of
individual cities like Nablus and Jericho, simply cannot leave their
home areas without special permits, which are not always forthcoming.
If they can travel, how long they spend waiting at checkpoints, from
minutes to hours, depends on the time of day and the humour of the
soldiers. Several checkpoints may punctuate a journey between cities
that would otherwise be less than an hour's drive apart. These
checkpoints move and shift every day, and army jeeps add to the
unpredictability and annoyance by stopping and creating ad hoc mobile
checkpoints at various spots.
 According to the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA), the number of such obstacles had increased to 534 by
mid-December from 376 in August 2005, when OCHA and the Israeli army
completed a joint count. When Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister,
agreed last month to ease restrictions at a few of these checkpoints as
a concession to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, human-rights
people reported that not only did many of the checkpoints go on working
as before; near the ones that had eased up, mobile ones were now
operating instead, causing worse disruption and pain.
It is sometimes hard to fathom the logic of the checkpoint regime. One
route from Ramallah, the Palestinian administrative capital, to
Jerusalem, involves a careful inspection of documents, while on another
the soldiers-if they are at their posts-just glance at cars'
occupants to see if they look Arab. Israeli law strictly forbids
Israeli citizens from visiting the main Palestinian cities, but they
can drive straight into Ramallah and Hebron without being challenged,
while other cities, such as Jericho and Nablus, remain impermeable. In
many places the barrier that Israel is building through the West Bank
for security purposes (though in Palestinian eyes to grab more land) is
monitored with all the care of an international border, while around
Jerusalem the army turns a blind eye to hundreds of people who slip
through cracks in the wall as part of their daily commute.
Because of the internal travel restrictions, people who want to move
from one Palestinian city to another for work or study must register a
change of address to make sure they can stay there. But they cannot.
Israel's population registry, which issues Palestinian identity cards
as well as Israeli ones, has issued almost no new Palestinian cards
since the start of the second intifada in 2000. And that means no
address changes either. This also makes it virtually impossible for
Palestinians from abroad to get residency in the occupied territories,
which are supposed to be their future state, never mind in Israel.
No-through-roads galore
On top of that, in the past year several thousand Palestinians who had
applied for residency in the West Bank and were living there on
renewable six-month visitor permits have become illegal residents too,
liable to be stopped and deported at any checkpoint, not because of
anything they have done but because Israel has stopped renewing permits
since Hamas, the Islamist movement, took control of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) a year ago. (Israel says it is because the PA isn't
handing over the requests.)
Like Israelis, Palestinians who commit a traffic offence on the West
Bank's highways have to pay the fine at an Israeli post office or a
police station. But in the West Bank the only post offices and police
stations are on Israeli settlements that most West Bank Palestinians
cannot visit without a rare permit. If they do not pay, however, they
lose their driving licences the next time the police stop them. They
also get a criminal record-which then makes an Israeli entry permit
quite impossible.
Some of the regulations stray into the realm of the absurd. A year ago
a military order, for no obvious reason, expanded the list of protected
wild plants in the West Bank to include za'atar (hyssop), an abundant
herb and Palestinian staple. For a while, soldiers at checkpoints
confiscated bunches of it from bewildered Palestinians who had merely
wanted something to liven up their salads. Lately there have been no
reports of za'atar confiscation, but, says Michael Sfard, the legal
adviser for Yesh Din, another Israeli human-rights body, the order is
still in force. As he tells the story, he cannot help laughing. There
is not much else to do.