Israel shuts West Bank borders for holiday week

The occupied West Bank, as if it were a financial institution, has been closed for the Jewish holidays.

men carry the body of Aziz Yousef, 21, who was killed in an Israeli army operation near Ramallah yesterday.

RAMALLAH, west bank // It sounds like a peculiar kind of riddle: when is a holiday not a holiday? But there is no conundrum for the Palestinians of the occupied West Bank, which, as if it were a financial institution, has been closed for the Jewish holidays. This "general closure", to use the terminology of the Israeli army, began at midnight on Sunday and will last 10 days until midnight on Tuesday. During this period, no Palestinian with a West Bank ID, except in humanitarian cases, is allowed to enter Israel for any reason. Checkpoints into Israel have been closed not only to the entry of people, but also the entry and exit of goods. "My business freezes," said Ayman Mazouni, 33, the proprietor of CompuServe, a computer shop and maintenance service in the centre of Ramallah. "I cannot get spare parts through the checkpoints and I am not able myself to travel to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv to pick them up." Mr Mazouni holds a permit, issued by the Israeli army, that normally enables him to enter Israel only for work purposes. He is not allowed to spend the night. But that permission is now suspended. It means, he said, that rather than go himself to pick up a shipment of parts that, as a result of a delay at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, was not delivered to Ramallah in time, he will now have to wait until after the holidays. "I have some very irate customers," he said, "but what can I do? They're on holiday, we're on holiday." The Sukkot holiday, or "festival of tabernacles", commemorates the 40 years in the wilderness the Jewish people are said to have spent after escaping Egypt, a time during which God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses. The actual holiday started on Tuesday, but the closing of the West Bank came early, since the Israeli army considers it a "highly sensitive time. The closings around various Jewish holidays started in 2002 when a suicide bomber killed 30 Israelis and wounded more than 100 during the Passover holiday. Since then, the Israeli army goes on high alert and tightens restrictions on Palestinians. But few Palestinians are convinced by the security argument. For one, they say, closings are draconian at all times, not just at holidays, and those that have permits have already been vetted and so should not constitute a risk. "It's an absurd policy," said Jumanah Bureish, 37, an administrative assistant with a non-governmental organisation in Ramallah. Ms Bureish holds a West Bank ID but lives in Jerusalem because her husband and her two children hold Jerusalem Ids. Able only to work in the West Bank, however, and illegal in Jerusalem without a permit, she now has to take an enforced week off as a result of the shutdown since she would not be allowed back in Jerusalem. "It's absurd because the people that have permits are the only people permitted to enter Israel in any case and they have already been rigorously checked. So the Israelis are contradicting their own permit policy. Why would these people suddenly become security risks when the holidays are on?" Mrs Bureish said the policy was simply "racist". "It's a way for them to assert their authority, consolidate the occupation and keep Palestinians off the streets for the Jewish holidays." Sam Bahour, a Palestinian businessman in Ramallah, said the holiday closing did not have a huge effect on the Palestinian economy only because the permit policy in any case is so restricted and this is a "predictable closure". "It's another external skew to our economy? [But] the closure is only one element, the other issue is the dependence factor," said Mr Bahour, who opened the first shopping centre in the Palestinian territories. "It reinforces the level of Palestinian economic dependence on Israel that has been built up over many years. Even though Israel wants political separation, it has refused to allow economic independence." The Israeli army referred requests for comment on to the ministry of defence, where decisions on checkpoint closings are made. No one there could be reached for comment because of the holidays. [e-mail]