Israeli prime minister calls off West Bank bus segregation

The proposed change would have forced Palestinian labourers, who enter Israel for work daily, to return home through the same checkpoint they entered and prevented them from riding West Bank buses alongside Israelis.

JERUSALEM // Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday ordered the suspension of a controversial ban on Palestinians riding the same buses as Jewish settlers when returning from Israel to the West Bank.

The announcement came hours after the three-month pilot project approved by defence minister Moshe Yaalon began.

An official in the prime minister’s office said Mr Netanyahu called Mr Yaalon to tell him he found his proposal “unacceptable” and the two men decided to freeze the plan.

Mr Yaalon had launched the pilot programme following repeated complaints from Jewish settlers who ride the buses and say the Palestinian workers constitute a security threat and harass female Jewish riders.

Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war and Palestinians want it as part of their future state.

Thousands of Palestinians enter Israel for work each day from the West Bank and often return home in buses alongside Jewish settlers.

The Palestinian labourers all have security clearance and special permits, but the proposed change would have forced them to return home through the same checkpoint they entered and prevented them from riding West Bank buses alongside Israelis.

Critics derided the plan as racist and said it would harm Israel’s image, which has already been under pressure because of its continued settlement activity in the West Bank.

“The separation between Palestinians and Jews on public transportation is an unnecessary humiliation and a stain on the face of the country and its citizens,” opposition leader Isaac Herzog wrote on his Facebook page. “It adds unnecessary oil to the bonfire of hate against Israel in the world.”

Zehava Galon, leader of the dovish Meretz party, went further, saying, “This is how apartheid looks.”

The proposal even came under fire from backers of the settlements, who said it did not promote their cause and created undue damage to Israel’s image.

Mr Netanyahu quickly reversed course amid the criticism, marking an inauspicious start for a government that took office this week and has held only one cabinet meeting.

Mr Netanyahu’s narrow coalition is dominated by hardline lawmakers aligned with the West Bank settler movement.

Their support for further settlement construction, and their opposition to peacemaking with the Palestinians, has set the stage for likely clashes between Israel and its Western allies.

The bus segregation plan, if implemented, would have drawn global comparisons to both South African apartheid and the racial segregation on buses that sparked the American civil rights movement.

Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Reuven Rivlin, commended the reversal of course saying that such separation between Israelis and Arabs would be “unthinkable”

“Such statements go against the very foundations of the state of Israel, and impact upon our very ability to establish here a Jewish and democratic state,” he said. “It is important we remember that our sovereignty obligates us to prove our ability to live side by side.”

Meanwhile, a Palestinian attacker in a vehicle ran over two police officers in east Jerusalem on Wednesday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers on the scene opened fire at the attacker and killed him. The two police officers were lightly wounded and evacuated to a hospital.

Israel has seen several isolated vehicular and stabbing attacks in Jerusalem in recent months, raising fears of a renewed wave of Palestinian violence like the one that gripped the country a decade ago.

* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press