OCCUPIED AL-QUDS: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suspended a ban on Palestinians from the West Bank taking Israeli bus routes to return home, just hours after the plan was approved by his defense minister.
The new regulations restricted Palestinian commuters to using the same crossings for entering and leaving Israel.
“Under a three-month pilot project, Palestinians who work in Israel will, starting Wednesday, need to return home by the same crossings without taking buses used by [Israeli] residents” of the West Bank, an Israeli Defense Ministry official said earlier Wednesday.
Thousands of Palestinians take the bus to go to work in Israel from the West Bank. For the time being, Palestinians could enter Israeli territory through one check point and return via another one.
The new suspended plan includes just four checkpoints – at Eliyahu, Eyal, Hala and Rayhan – separated one from another by considerable distances. The new pending regulations imply that all Palestinian workers should return to their homes every day for security reasons and now cannot stay in Israel for the night.
Ahead of the attempt to introduce new rules, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told Israeli radio that the government “will draw lessons from this experience at the end of the three-month trial period.”
Human rights organizations have said they plan to appeal against the new regulations to the Israeli High Court of Justice.
