Israel cancels plan for Palestinian bus ban
Netanyahu shelves project over international image concerns
JERUSALEM— Responding to intense criticism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has 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 Israeli government’s turnabout Wednesday 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 IsraeliPalestinian 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 with 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 that the plan was justified because of security concerns, denouncing the plan 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 that 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,” said Rivlin, whose voice carries significant moral weight even though his position is largely ceremonial. “Such statements 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 that 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 that the plan for segregated buses was particularly “blunt,” but that other forms of segregation were still in place, pointing to the existence of 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 that 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 Defence Ministry, apparently in response to pressure from Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who have long demanded separate transportation for the Palestinians.
The plan 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, and 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 cuts down on travel time for Palestinians who live along the way.
“These proposals are unacceptable to the prime minister.” MARK REGEV NETANYAHU SPOKESMAN