ISRAEL DROPS BUS SEGREGATION
Defence minister waited until after March election
• Responding to intense criticism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday abruptly shelved a contentious pilot project introduced this week that prohibited Palestinians returning to the West Bank from riding on the same buses as Israelis headed to Jewish settlements.
The turnabout reflected the acute domestic sensitivity over Israel’s image abroad, particularly given its new, narrow government dominated by right-wing and religious parties, and the growing frustration in the West over the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
“These proposals are unacceptable to the prime minister,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu. “He spoke to the defence minister this morning, and they decided to shelve the matter.”
The decision to cancel the plan came as the European Union foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, arrived in the region to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and as Israel was involved in delicate efforts to head off a Palestinian attempt to have it suspended from FIFA, the world governing body of soccer.
Opposition politicians in Israel joined Palestinians in dismissing the idea the plan was justified because of security concerns, denouncing it as immoral and racist, and saying it smacked of apartheid.
There was also criticism from some more conservative quarters, including Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, who welcomed the decision to halt a process he said “could have led to an unthinkable separation between bus lines for Jews and Arabs.”
Such ideas “have no place being heard or said,” Rivlin said in a statement.
They “go against the very foundations of the state of Israel, and impact upon our very ability to establish here a Jewish and democratic state,” added the Israeli president, whose voice carries significant moral weight, even though his position is largely ceremonial. “Such s tatements cause great damage to the state of Israel, and to the settlement movement.”
Rivlin has long opposed the establishment of a Palestinian state in territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war, and has supported building and maintaining settlements, which most of the world considers to be a violation of international law, while advocating equal rights for all.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian leader in the West Bank, said the plan for segregated buses was particularly “blunt,” but other forms of segregation were still in place, pointing to roads in the West Bank that are exclusively for use by Israelis.
“This revealed the fact that Israel unfortunately has transformed the situation into a system of apartheid,” he said.
The prime minister appeared to have been taken by surprise when the Israeli news media reported Wednesday the three-month pilot project had begun, though officials in Netanyahu’s office declined to confirm that.
The bus plan was conceived by the Israeli Defense Ministry, apparently in response to pressure from Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who have long demanded separate transportation for the Palestinians.
It called for Palestinians who work in Israel to return to the West Bank at the end of the day through one of four designated Israeli checkpoints, then take Palestinian buses to their towns and villages. They would no longer have been allowed to take Israeli buses travelling in the direction of West Bank settlements, which reduces travel time for Palestinians who live along the way.
Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon denied there had ever been a plan to segregate the buses.
“There was no discussion to do so, no decision was taken to do so, and there will be no decision to do so,” he said in a statement later Wednesday.
Rather, he said the idea had been to tighten security by supervising the re-entry of Palestinian workers into the West Bank, having them pass through the designated checkpoints.
Israel’s deputy defence minister, Eli Ben-Dahan, a member of the right-wing, pro-settlement Jewish Home party, said he was surprised by the reversal, having heard about it as he was defending the new policy in parliament.
“There is no apartheid here,” he said, telling opponents of the policy to “stop blackening Israel’s reputation.” He defended the separate bus policy on security grounds, citing Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
Critics have said there is no security rationale for barring Palestinian workers from Israeli buses, because the workers had received permits from the authorities allowing them to work in Israel.
The newspaper Haaretz reported in October Yaalon had issued an instruction to stop Palestinian workers travelling on Israeli buses, but Yaalon, who remains defence minister in the new government, apparently waited to introduce the plan until after the March elections.
Representatives for the settlers had complained the buses were overcrowded and unpleasant, in addition to the concerns about security.
Mordhay Yogev, a legislator from the Jewish Home party, said those who opposed the plan for separate lines “are unfamiliar with the reality, and their statements are tinged with hypocrisy, lies and irresponsibility.”
There is no apartheid here. Stop blackening Israel’s reputation