Unfortunately, the shock lies only in the act of making it semi-official. When Israeli media reported that the country is segregating buses in the West Bank, the only shift is that this looks like an approved form of the sort of petty apartheid that Israel has always denied practising. From this week, buses that are meant for Jewish settlers around the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya, in the occupied West Bank, will no longer take Palestinian passengers – the few that are granted work permits to enter Israel on a per-day only basis. This, we are ludicrously informed, is for the Palestinians’ own good – they will be more comfortable on their own buses, as opposed to the crowded Israeli-only vehicles. But setters, when interviewed, present a different story: that the policy is result of their complaints at having to share transport with Palestinians (because they are, by definition, a “security risk”).
Years before I acquired a scruffy-but-sturdy old car for reporting trips to the West Bank, I regularly used public transport – and it is no big secret that the system is already segregated. Large, air-conditioned, subsidised Israeli buses with bullet-proof windows glide Jewish passengers across the green line into the occupied West Bank. Getting from East Jerusalem into Palestinian towns is another story: on crowded transit vans functioning as mini-buses, ten passengers a piece, bumping through pot-holed, non-settler roads interspersed with Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints. The West Bank is already a grid of A-roads and B-roads, with Palestinians and Jewish settlers funnelled into either according to colour-coded ID cards and number plates. This unofficial system just got extra hardware, with the introduction of a new Israeli bus line, for Palestinians with the right permits, who erroneously believed they could use settler transport to get to their wage-slave jobs in Israel. And Israel says they still can do so, of course – except that drivers and border police have already indicated that Palestinians choosing the “wrong” bus will be directed to the right ones. Officially, there is no segregation. In practice, there plainly is. Full story...
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Years before I acquired a scruffy-but-sturdy old car for reporting trips to the West Bank, I regularly used public transport – and it is no big secret that the system is already segregated. Large, air-conditioned, subsidised Israeli buses with bullet-proof windows glide Jewish passengers across the green line into the occupied West Bank. Getting from East Jerusalem into Palestinian towns is another story: on crowded transit vans functioning as mini-buses, ten passengers a piece, bumping through pot-holed, non-settler roads interspersed with Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints. The West Bank is already a grid of A-roads and B-roads, with Palestinians and Jewish settlers funnelled into either according to colour-coded ID cards and number plates. This unofficial system just got extra hardware, with the introduction of a new Israeli bus line, for Palestinians with the right permits, who erroneously believed they could use settler transport to get to their wage-slave jobs in Israel. And Israel says they still can do so, of course – except that drivers and border police have already indicated that Palestinians choosing the “wrong” bus will be directed to the right ones. Officially, there is no segregation. In practice, there plainly is. Full story...
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- The wretched scandal of Gaza...
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