 |
Feature: "Israel Makes Us Live Like Animals": Palestinians
At the entrance to the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinians, their cars, trucks and taxies are stopped by Israeli soldiers in full gear at a checkpoint and checked one by one.
Vehicles to and from the city formed depressing lines along the Ramallah-Jerusalem road, the No. 60. The artery is now congested, if not totally cut off, because of tight Israeli closure.
"By cutting the territories into pieces and disconnecting the villages, Israel has made Palestinians live like animals," said Saleem Abu Gosh, who is in charge of public relations in the Palestinian Media Center in Ramallah.
Ramallah, 15 kilometers north of Jerusalem, is the seat of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank.
"Israeli blockade has turned the Palestinian areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip into prisons," Saleem told Xinhua. "They have deprived us of basic human rights."
"The whole purpose of the closure is to torture and humiliate the Palestinian people," he added.
The Israeli army imposed on-and-off closures on Palestinian self-rule areas in the past eight months of bloody conflicts, which have killed over 570 people, most of them Palestinians. It slapped a tightened blockade following a lethal suicide bombing attack in Tel Aviv Friday night which killed 20 Israeli teenagers.
The army has moved the checkpoints two kilometers away from Ramallah to reinforce and expand its control over the city, despite Israeli claims that it has relaxed the blockade three days after the Tel Aviv attack.
Ali Sweilem, a Palestinian taxi driver, said he had been heartened by the reported ease of control, only to see with his own eyes a totally difference picture. "The closure is still here and life is miserable for the Palestinians," he sighed.
His nephew, Usama Ahmed, an undergraduate student at Bear Zait University, 10 kilometers north of Ramallah, had to stay at home for the third day Wednesday, because the university has been closed after the Israeli blockade.
"The closure has nothing to do with their security concerns," Saleem said, "those who really want to launch attacks against Israelis do not go through the checkpoints anyway."
He said that repeated Israeli closure have prevented the farmers from selling products to other places, and barred 100,000 Palestinians from taking jobs inside Israel. "The economic situation is horrible," he added.
Since the Palestinian al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising, broke out last September, Palestinian economy has suffered a gross loss of 6. 8 billion U.S. dollars. Israeli statistics put its own loss at 2 billion U.S. dollars.
A 36-year-old peddler who called himself only as Anwar, said he had been prohibited from going home over the past three days because Israel only allowed Palestinians older than 45 to leave Ramallah.
In the only souvenir shop designed for tourists in the city, a gloomy-faced shopkeeper said "the city is empty and business is poor." He blamed Israeli occupation for all the violence that took place over the years, saying the Palestinians are eager to live in peace.
A 50-year-old Palestinian American, who gave his name only as Nasser, was angry that he could not get from Israel exit permits for his children who want to spend a vacation in the United States.
"The Palestinians cannot live together with the Jews in the West Bank any longer because there is so much hatred," he noted, "The settlements here are illegal and they have to get out of the land."
The Palestinians demand dismantling of the settlements as part of final-status issues toward ending the half-century old Palestinian-Israeli conflicts.
Nasser said: "You can not punish the entire Palestinian population for an individual's deeds," referring to the Tel Aviv suicide bombing attack.
Saleem, the Ramallah official, echoed his view: "(PNA Chairman Yasser) Arafat could not keep every Palestinian from shooting at Israelis and Israel should not use every incident as an excuse for attacking Palestinians.
Israel, gaining points in international opinion by refraining from taking revenge against Palestinians in the wake of the Tel Aviv blast, is pressuring Arafat to arrest Palestinian militants, among others, to effect a ceasefire he has promised.
Israeli defense minister, Binjamin Ben Eliezer, said Wednesday that Israel would relax certain restrictions on the Palestinian population due to declining violence in the past few days.
Foodstuffs, agricultural goods, petrol and gas will be allowed into Palestinian controlled territories, and Palestinian workers will be permitted into the Erez industrial area on the Gaza Strip border with Israel, he said.
But the Palestinians, having suffered so hard and so long, feel increasingly frustrated and pessimistic about a peaceful settlement with Israel, because, as they say, the blockade is still there, the occupation is continuing.
In This Section
|