The Arab roads are lined with walls and barbed wire when they transit a settler zone. They connect Palestinian towns and villages through tunnels under the settler roads, and in one case, Gvat Ze’ev, under the settlement itself through a 400-meter (1,200 feet) tunnel. The segregated roads are even inside Jerusalem, connecting Palestinian ghetto neighborhoods to Ramallah. A notorious example is the walled-in community of Bir Naballa, a largely Bedouin Jerusalem suburb of about 7,000 people that was a major commercial center until the Israelis enclosed it and restricted access.
The Israeli government, and apparently the Obama administration, justify these roads since they enable Palestinians to travel between the enclaves without encountering checkpoints or settlers. This allows Israel to remove a few checkpoints, gaining political points, while containing the Palestinian population in essentially large open-air prisons while the settlements and their connecting roads continue to expand.
A USAID official in Israel recently argued that since the roads facilitate more efficient transportation between the Palestinian areas, the West Bank economy will improve and the Palestinian Authority will be strengthened. However this line of reasoning ignores the rationale for the roads in the first place, and supports the permanent institutionalization of the Israel’s Occupation infrastructure into an improved version of Apartheid, or ‘Hafrada’ as the Israeli government calls it. ‘Hafrada’ means separation in Hebrew, as ‘Apartheid’ means separation in Africaans.
Israel has established the ‘Geder Hafrada’ (Separation Wall), and ‘Kvishei Hafrada’ (Separation Roads). The roads separate Palestinians and Israelis in a manner that never existed in South Africa even at the height of Apartheid. All South Africans mingled on the roads, in the cities and the workplaces, despite the constitutional discrimination, travel restrictions, and violence.
The relationship between USAID and the Palestinian contractors who build the roads is also questionable. By providing millions of dollars per year to West Bank contractors the Obama administration is continuing relationships with companies affiliated with Palestinian Authority officials, awarding many contracts to their relatives and friends.
An April 22nd Reuter’s report detailed how over 2 million dollars in USAID contracts have been awarded to companies owned by Tarek Abbas and Yasser Mahmoud Abbas, sons of the Palestinian President. Colorado-based engineering giant CH2M HILL is also the prime contractor for many USAID projects in the West Bank and subcontracts to these local companies. USAID officials have stated that the contracts were awarded through competitive bidding.
All the agreements since the Oslo process in 1993 have stipulated that settlement expansion must cease. This has been a consistent theme From the Road Map, to the Annapolis Agreement to the Arab League Initiative to President Obama’s latest pronouncements. Yet the White House has been silent on the roads, and continues to allow USAID to fund them. One wonders why?
Fred Schlomka is an Israeli businessman and the proprietor of www.ToursinEnglish.com.
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