Ez ma utotte meg a szememet es leginkabb azert, mert tovabbra sem tudom elhinni, hogy ez lenne a hosszutavu megoldas....

Israel and Palestine
Ever more separate

Oct 20th 2005 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

"[...] The shootings were in two different places on Route 60, the main north-south highway through the West Bank. Views vary as to which militant faction (or factions) really did it, but they may have been timed to embarrass Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who was drumming up support on a foreign tour due to end this week in Washington. Palestinian vehicles, which bear different-coloured licence plates from Israeli ones, are subject to ever-changing restrictions on which roads they may use. Since the start of the Palestinians' second intifada (uprising) five years ago some of the main West Bank highways, as well as the by-pass roads that Israel has built over the years to connect its West Bank settlements to one another and to Israel proper, have become Israeli-only. Some, among them Route 60, are usually open to at least some Palestinian vehicles, such as trucks and public transport. But after the shootings, Israel responded by banning all Palestinian traffic from several roads, including part of Route 60.

Maariv, a daily newspaper, reports that the army has been told to start implementing a plan to make such bans permanent, though government spokesmen say there has been no final decision. Israel is at work (slowly, after foreign donors last year refused a request for funding) on building and upgrading roads, bridges and tunnels to let Palestinians travel between their towns without ever turning on to a road used by Israelis.

That will complete the division of the West Bank into two road networks (see map). Israel says this will make Palestinians' lives easier: there will be less need for checkpoints and roadblocks. Perhaps so; but the Palestinian highways will be narrower, more winding and more hilly, so trips will take longer and cost more. They also tend to go through towns instead of by-passing them, which will mean huge snarl-ups of trucks and public transport. All this will hurt the Palestinian economy.

Signs of the creeping separation have been there for a while. The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has found that the number of fixed checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank has dropped by at least a third this year, in line with an Israeli promise in February to ease restrictions. However, that has mostly helped movement between small Palestinian villages and their nearby urban centres. The highways between the main towns, on the other hand, are increasingly lined with fences and barriers to prevent access, and there are now three times as many “flying checkpoints”, which pop up and turn back Palestinian cars at random, discouraging them from using roads that may one day become Israeli-only.
[...]
Yet Israel need be in no hurry. Though less visible, and almost ignored amid the international outrage, the dual road system is much like the barrier. It cuts settlers off from Palestinians, making them safer from attack and securing settlements deep inside the West Bank, not just those close to the Green Line. As with the barrier, each terrorist attack will not only further postpone the peace process—Israel says there can be no progress until the Palestinian Authority (PA) meets its road-map obligation to disarm militants—but will reinforce the argument for keeping the system in place. [...]"