IV. West Bank roads and international complicity in perpetuating the occupation
20. The Rapporteur strongly believes that the wider infrastructure of occupation and in particular the dual system of roads represents a growing violation by Israel, the occupying Power, of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and, more pertinently, of apartheid as an instance of a crime against humanity as specified in the statute governing the operations of the International Criminal Court. The dual system of roads, as correlated with legal regimes, creates two domains in the West Bank: one for privileged Israeli settlers and the other for subjugated Palestinians living under an occupation. This is particularly visible in the Government and international funding of a network of alternative roads designed to facilitate Palestinian travel, while institutionalizing Israeli military control over the existing main roads, which are then accessible only to Israeli settlers. Many of these roads are also being constructed or upgraded in Area C – the approximately 62 per cent of the West Bank, which according to the 1995 Oslo agreement remains under Israeli administrative and military control, and where the material conditions of the Palestinians living in Area C compares extremely unfavorably with conditions in areas A and B, and even with the wretched conditions under blockade in Gaza. In those cases, the roads remain under control of the occupying Power and thus largely inaccessible to Palestinians (except those very few who obtain a permit), while the international aid and money used to pay for the roads is money – diverted from funding streams ostensibly aimed at improving the lives of Palestinians living under occupation – instead benefits the occupying Power.
21. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that Israeli authorities continue to implement measures to restrict Palestinian movement and access and, at the same time, to facilitate the movement of Israeli settlers.[35] These measures include, namely, the expansion of the alternative (“fabric of life”) road network;
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[33] Carter Center, “Carter Center Calls for End to East Jerusalem Deportations, Respect for International Law” (22 July 2010). Available from www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/palestine-072210.html.
[34] The Human Rights Dimensions of Population Transfer, including the Implantation of Settlers, Preliminary Report prepared by A. S. al-Khawasneh and R. Hatano (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1993/17), paras. 15 and 17.
[35] OCHA-OPT, “West Bank Movement and Access Update” (June 2010).
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checkpoints (including partial checkpoints); and the unstaffed obstacles, including roadblocks, earthmounds, earth walls, road gates, road barriers and trenches.[36] These measures exact a price from Palestinians. For example, the “fabric of life” roads, which often require the seizure of private Palestinian lands, reconnect a few of the Palestinian communities that were disconnected due to the restricted access of Palestinians to a main road or due to the obstruction of a road by the separation wall. They, however, continue to reinforce the exclusion of Palestinians from the primary road network and undermine the territorial contiguity between different areas.[37]
22. Whether inadvertently or not, the role of the international donor community has led to a consolidation of Israeli control in the West Bank through the two-tiered system of roads. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has acknowledged that all its West Bank projects in Area C, including road construction, must be carried out through prior coordination with the Government of Israel.[38] In other words, USAID and American taxpayers are financing, and thereby further entrenching, the Israeli de facto annexation of the West Bank.[39] In one specific example, USAID announced in June 2010 that United States taxpayers had paid for road construction in the West Bank, boasting that “after completion of a road project in the southern West Bank, trade between Dahriyeh and the neighboring city of Beer Sheva (approximately 100,000 residents total) increased dramatically”.[40] The West Bank area between Dahriyeh and Beer Sheva lies largely within Area C, thus aid funds designated for Palestinian residents is instead helping Israel finance the occupation. In another example in a nearby area, Nidal Hatim, a resident of Battir village near Bethlehem, described his inability to use Route 60, the main road from Bethlehem to his home village and the principal north-south traffic artery through the West Bank; “To go on the highway, we have to go through the checkpoint and turn around. I have a West Bank Palestinian ID, so I can’t go through the checkpoint”.[41] Instead, he takes a side road that is currently being built by the Palestinian Authority with USAID support. The side road, still under construction, weaves around and under the four-lane Route 60, which is now used mostly by Israeli settlers. Upon completion, this “fabric of life” road is expected to be the sole access point connecting the villages in the western section of Bethlehem governorate with the urban area of Bethlehem.[42] According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, “the dual road system in the West Bank will in the long run cement Israeli control. The tunnel that connects with Battir can be controlled by one army jeep”.[43] The Palestinian Authority grants approval for some of the roads. However, that does not change the legal consequence of an outside-Government funding infrastructure that consolidates the process of de facto annexation already under way in the
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[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Letter from USAID dated 9 June 2010. Available from www.usaid.gov/wbg/misc/2010-WBG-11.pdf.
[39] See further Akiva Eldar, “US taxpayers are paying for Israel’s West Bank occupation”, Haaretz, 16 November 2010: “The roads are one of the initiatives of the United States Agency for International Development for building infrastructure in underdeveloped countries. Israel has already proudly left the club of developing countries and is not among the clients of USAID. Nevertheless, it appears the Smith family of Illinois is making the occupation a little less expensive for the Cohen family of Petah Tikva.”
[40] USAID, “Fact Sheet: Water Resources and Infrastructure”, (June 2010). Available from www.usaid.gov/wbg/misc/WRI%20-%20INP%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf.
[41] Nadia Hijab and Jesse Rosenfeld, “Palestinian Roads: Cementing Statehood, or Israeli Annexation?”, The Nation, 30 April 2010.
[42] “West Bank Movement and Access Update”. 43 “Palestinian Roads”. See also Badil, “The implications of losing access to route 60”. Available from www.badil.org/en/documents/category/33-ongoing-displacement.
V.
occupied Palestinian territory. Such funding could arguably result in the outside Government supplying the funds being deemed complicit in the illegal occupation.
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