Israel scraps scheme to ban Palestinians from buses

 

Israel’s prime minister,Benjamin Netanyahu, has cancelled a pilot scheme banning Palestinian workers from Israeli buses in the occupied territories – denounced as tantamount to apartheid – only hours after it was announced.
T
he plan had been approved by Netanyahu’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, but was cancelled amid fierce criticism from Israeli opposition figures, human rights groups and a former minister in Netanyahu’s own party, who said it was a “stain on the face of Israel” that would damage its international image.

The move had been enthusiastically welcomed by settler groups and pro-settlement MPs who had long been lobbying for the ban.

The three month pilot scheme – which had been due to come into force on Wednesday May 20,2015 – would have imposed strict new controls on thousands of Palestinians with permits to work in Israel, insisting they travel home through certain designated checkpoints and banning them from using Israeli run buses in the occupied West Bank.

The timing of the scheme’s launch – during visits by Sepp Blatter, the president of Fifa, world football’s governing body, and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini – had seemed bizarre.

The Israeli opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, had immediately condemned the scheme.

The leader of Israel’s leftwing Meretz party, Zahava Gal-On, said: “This is how apartheid looks. There is no better or nicer way to put it. Separate buses for Jews and Palestinians prove that democracy and occupation cannot co-exist.”

Note
Palestinians with entry permits – mainly working in the construction industry – currently enter Israel through smart crossings that register them and are then allowed to return by public transportation with no need to register on their return