BillCosby

Israel Supreme Court accept segregated roads some call it a path to "apartheid





BEIT SIRA, WEST BANK - Ali Abu Safia, mayor of this Palestinian village, steers his car up one potholed road, then another, finding each exit blocked by huge concrete chunks placed there by the Israeli Army. On a sleek highway 100 yards away, Israeli cars whiz by.

"They took our land to build this road, and now we can't even use it," Abu Safia says bitterly, pointing to the highway with one hand as he drives with the other. "Israel says it is because of security. But it's politics."

The object of Abu Safia's contempt -- Hwy. 443, a major access road to Jerusalem -- has taken on special significance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the first time, the Supreme Court, albeit in an interim decision, has accepted the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied areas.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel told the court that what was happening on the highway could be the onset of legal apartheid in the West Bank.

Built largely on private Palestinian land, the road was first challenged in the Supreme Court in the early 1980s. The justices, in a landmark ruling, permitted it to be built because the army said its primary function was to serve the local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In recent years, in the wake of stone-throwing and several drive-by shootings, Israel has blocked Palestinians' access to the road.

This month's decision calls on the army to give a progress report in six months on its efforts to build separate roads and to take other steps to compensate Palestinians for being banned from the road. It is the acceptance of the idea of separate road systems that has engendered commentary.

"There is already a separate legal system in the territories for Israelis and Palestinians," said Limor Yehuda, who argued the case for the civil rights association on behalf of six Palestinian villages. "With the approval of separate roads, if it becomes a widespread policy, then the word for it will be 'apartheid.'"

Many Israelis and their supporters reject the term, with its implication of racist animus.

"The basis of separation is not ethnic since Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem residents with Israeli ID cards can use the road," argues Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative research organization. "The basis of the separation is to keep out of secure areas people living in chaotic areas."

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