The Temples of Occupation

The Temples of the Occupation
Meron Benvenisti, Ha'aretz, 01.01.2007
So far, of the dozens of checkpoints promised to be removed from the West Bank in a "gesture" to Mahmoud Abbas, not a single checkpoint has been dismantled.It will be interesting to see what excuse they come up with after the weather improves. The plan to remove the roadblocks has been delayed over some excuse or another for several years, and in the meantime their number has multiplied.

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Haaretz probe finds little has changed at West Bank roadblocks
Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, 11 January 2007
Israel has made it only marginally easier for Palestinians to get through roadblocks in the West Bank, and in many cases, no changes have been made at all, a Haaretz investigation yesterday of roadblocks in the Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and Nablus areas reveals. The insignificant improvements fail to meet the commitment Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas during their December 24 meeting in Jerusalem.

Virtual concessions / Making a mockery of the state
Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff, Ha'aretz, 11 January 2007
When the government and defense establishment declare their intention to mitigate some of the restrictions on the Palestinians in the territories, they're counting on the Israeli media's short attention span.

Announcing alleviations to the press is immediately rewarded with large headlines, the improvement of Israel's image overseas and an easing in U.S. pressure for concessions. Usually nobody checks whether the alleviations were actually carried out.

If the Palestinians complain that the mitigations were not implemented, we can always accuse them of ungrateful whining and issue a bunch of confusing data in response.

However, after a trip along West Bank roadblocks yesterday, Haaretz found that while the traffic flow in a small number of the roads improved, the situation is very far from the rosy picture Israel has painted.