Israel’s new checkpoint system criticized by United Nations

The head of the United Nations Refugee Works Agency in Gaza, Karen Abu Zaid, challenged the new Israeli system of ‘streamlined’ checkpoints as “an insidious new regime to limit freedom of movement” and control the Palestinian economy.

The 700 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks that are virtually everywhere in the Palestinian territory known as the West Bank severely hinder the movement of the Palestinian population.  Now, the Israeli occupying authorities are installing a system of six border terminals between the West bank and Israel, which many Palestinians and human rights groups have criticized as the further imprisonment of the Palestinian people into enclaves.

             

"It is obvious that these new procedures will result in loss of time and an exponential increase in costs," said Karen Abu Zaid – an increase estimated at over $500,000, which the aid agency, with its meager budget, would somehow have to absorb.

 

All aid coming into the country would have to be shipped to Israeli ports, transported to West Bank terminals, unloaded and passed through the checkpoints, then re-loaded into trucks on the other side.

 

Abu Zaid challenged the system, which she says will also affect the travel of the United Nations workers.  UNRWA is currently the largest employer in the Palestinian territories (with the Israeli import-export ban in place, all private commerce has literally ground to a halt), employing 4,800 Palestinian staff in the West Bank and another 10,000 in Gaza.

 

"Unless access is assured, there will be a high human cost," said Abu Zaid. "More lives will be lost, public health will suffer and the standards of education will fall. The resulting sense of isolation and abandonment accompanied by an increase in radicalism serves no one's interests."