Netanyahu suspends ‘needless’ Palestinians-only buses

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suspended new bus travel and checkpoint regulations for Palestinian labourers yesterday, hours after they were imposed, to an outcry by critics accusing Israel of racial segregation.

Effectively overruling his defence minister, Netanyahu froze the edicts ahead of a meeting later in the day in Jerusalem with Federica Mogherini, foreign policy chief of the EU, a group highly critical of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu drew accusations at home and abroad of racism two months ago when he warned on election day that Arab citizens were voting in “droves”. He later apologised to members of Israel’s Arab minority for the remarks.

The “transit point programme” that began early yesterday would have required Palestinian labourers in Israel to return to the occupied West Bank at the end of the workday via one of four checkpoints. They would have needed to use Palestinian-only buses to get there.

Israeli civil liberties groups objected, as did Palestinian officials and Israeli legislators, including several from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and the leader of the opposition, Isaac Herzog, of the centre-left Zionist Union.

“The segregation on public transport in Judea and Samaria is a needless humiliation, a stain on the country’s face and citizens,” Herzog said on Twitter, using the biblical names for the West Bank area.

One Israeli official said the plan stemmed only from a need to “monitor the entry and exit of labourers who are not citizens, for security reasons, as any normal country would do”.

But as criticism of the move echoed in the Israeli media, a Netanyahu aide said the prime minister viewed the proposal as unacceptable.

“He spoke to the defence minister and it was decided to freeze it,” the aide said.

The currently suspended defence ministry initiative followed the opening in 2013 of Palestinian-only bus lines in the West Bank that ran in parallel to buses primarily serving Jewish settlers.

Hussein Fuqahaa, of the Palestinian Workers Union, said 45 000 to 50 000 Pales- tinians had Israeli work permits. He said an almost identical number worked in Israel without them and described the travel restrictions as a “racist measure”.

During a Palestinian revolt in 2000, Israel was hit by dozens of suicide bombers from the West Bank. Such attacks have waned, given security co-operation between Israel and the US-backed Palestinian administration in the West Bank.