{"id":4022,"date":"2013-03-04T08:38:25","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T08:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4022"},"modified":"2013-03-04T08:39:38","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T08:39:38","slug":"israel-launches-racially-segregated-buses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=4022","title":{"rendered":"Israel launches racially segregated buses"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>From Monday Palestinians travelling to day jobs into central Israel from the West Bank will be urged to board special buses at a checkpoint instead of the regular services used by Israelis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The scheme was drawn up by the Israeli transport ministry after residents in two Jewish settlements complained that Palestinians travellers on the Trans-Samaria road \u2013 also known as Highway 5 \u2013 between the West Bank and Tel Aviv were a potential threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There were also reports of overcrowding and fights between Israeli and Palestinian passengers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The transport ministry insisted the move was \u201cdesigned to improve the service for Palestinians entering Israel\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But some human rights groups called it \u201cblatant racism\u201d that resembled South African-style apartheid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThey are institutionalising segregated services for Jews and non-Jews,\u201d said Ofra Yeshua-Lyth, an activist with Women For Civil Disobedience, an Israeli-Palestinian campaign group. \u201cMany people don\u2019t class the Israeli situation as apartheid because for a long time, Israel refrained from the characteristics of petty apartheid, like separate roads, caf\u00e9s and buses. This bus situation is a step in the direction of petty apartheid because people are being segregated in their daily activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Avner Ovadia, a transport ministry spokesperson, said there was no official ban on Palestinian workers travelling on public buses.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurthermore, the transport ministry is not authorised to stop any passenger travelling on these bus routes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But drivers with the Afikim bus company, which operates the Trans-Samaria route, said Palestinians attempting to use the regular services would be pointed towards a different bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not allowed to refuse service and we will not order anyone to get off the bus, but from what we were told \u2026 there will be checks at<\/p>\n

the checkpoint, and Palestinians will be asked to board their own buses,\u201d one driver told Ynet, an Israeli news website.<\/p>\n

Flyers in Arabic advertising the new service have been distributed at bus stops near Palestinian villages in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

Yirsael Maidad, a spokesman for the Jewish Settlers Council, said Israelis felt justified in refusing to share buses with Palestinians because of Israel\u2019s experience with suicide bombers.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince we ride buses with Arabs every day in Israel, it\u2019s not a racist thing but for some strange reason, Arabs blow themselves up in buses and Israelis find that very unnerving,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you were to ask some bright young radical, he would say forcing Arabs to ride Israeli uses would be a form of colonialism. Having their own buses should be very much welcomed as part of a state-building process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campaigners say troops began ordering Palestinians with Israeli work permits off buses after settlers made complaints last November.<\/p>\n

After witnessing one such incident, Ms Yeshua-Lyth lodged a report with Makhsom Watch, an Israeli group that monitors check point incidents. She described how soldiers herded around 30 Palestinian workers from a bus travelling from Tel Aviv to the West Bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe soldier\/officer roars: \u201cUdrub!\u201d (Move!) And then: \u201cSit on your butts! On your butts!,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThey are then marched to the terminal fence and made to stand along it in a line, then to sit on the cold ground and wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the men asked why they had been taken from the bus, they were told \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to be on Highway 5\u201d and \u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to use public transportation at all\u201d.<\/p>\n

Palestinians say they have been forced to walk several miles to their homes or use expensive taxi services since the policy of removing them from buses began. An estimated 29,000 Palestinians travel to jobs in Israel every day, according to official figures. –\u00a0http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Monday Palestinians travelling to day jobs into central Israel from the West Bank will be urged to board special buses at a checkpoint instead of the regular services used by Israelis. The scheme was drawn up by the Israeli transport ministry after residents in two Jewish settlements complained that Palestinians travellers on the Trans-Samaria … Continue reading “Israel launches racially segregated buses”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[164,178,664,2597],"class_list":["post-4022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-apartheid","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-racial-segregation"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/israelbuses.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4025,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions\/4025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}