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A Freeway in Israel Provokes a Cringe: Apartheid
"They took our land to build this road, and now we can't even use it," bitterly says Abu Safia, a Palestinian in an excellent piece by Ethan Bronner in today's "New York Times."
The highway in question is 443, a major access road to Jerusalem. A recent decision by Israel's Supreme Court has tacitly endorsed the idea of separate roads for Palestinians in the occupied territories. It certainly magnifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But it also shows how roadways all over the world have often been used to divide communities, often along racial or ethnic lines. It echoes many of the critiques Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford and others have brought against modern urban planning.
Who gets to use it? Read after the jump.
Highway 443 was built hugely on private Palestinian land. It was legally challenged in the early 1980s, but the Supreme Court allowed the project to go ahead because the Israeli army claimed its purpose was to serve local Palestinians, not Israeli commuters. In the wake of stone throwings and several drive-by shootings (five people have been killed since 2001), however, Israeli authorities have blocked Palestinian access to the road.
Today 443 is a conduit for some 40,000 cars headed to Jerusalem, almost all of them Israeli. The Israeli Supreme Court ruling was based on a promise by the army to build separate, commensurate roads for Palestinians.
Urban planners around the world have pushed major thoroughfares through poor neighborhoods to disperse communities or otherwise cut them off from urban centers. The current ruling from Israel's Supreme Court seems more likely to usher in a two-tiered system.
Sources: New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Jerusalem Post
Photo: Tess Schaflen via ActiveStills
Video: "Apartheid Road":312 KM of West Bank Apartheid roads are forbidden for Palestinian use.
The highway 443 is one of the most prominent and upsetting. about 15 Km of highway 443 from Modi'in to Jerusakem are going on Palestinian land in the area of the West Bank.
It is safe to assume that the majority of 40,000 Israeli citizens that use this road for shorten their way from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on a daily basis, are unaware to the fact that they are traveling through the occupied territories. As well as they are unaware that 80,000 Palestinians that live aside the road which had been built on their land, are not allowed to use it to their Metropolice Ramalla.
Part 1 - the injustice and the discrimination of the apartheid highway 443.
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