As from next Friday (19.01.2007), Israeli drivers will be forbidden to take Palestinians in their cars in the West Bank.

That stinks of Apartheid.

No “security” need will be served by this disgraceful order of the occupation authorities.

Drivers with a moral sense will ignore it.

Gush Shalom, published in Haaretz, January 12, 2007

ERGÄNZUNG: 

Uri Avnery, 20.01.2007                     

A Freedom Ride

MAHATMA GANDHI would have loved it. Nelson Mandela would have saluted. Martin Luther King would have been the most excited – it would have reminded him of the old days.

Yesterday, a decree of the Officer Commanding the Central Sector, General Yair Naveh, was about to come into force. It forbade Israeli drivers from giving a ride to Palestinian passengers in the occupied territories. The knitted-Kippah-wearing General, a friend of the settlers, justified this as a vital security necessity. In the past, inhabitants of the West Bank have sometimes reached Israeli territory in Israeli cars.

Israeli peace activists decided that this nauseating order must be protested. Several organizations planned a protest action for the very day it was due to come into force. They organized a “Freedom Ride” of Israeli car-owners who were to enter the West Bank (a criminal offence in itself) and give a ride to local Palestinians, who had volunteered for the action.

An impressive event in the making. Israeli drivers and Palestinian passengers breaking the law openly, facing arrest and trial in a military court.

At the last moment, the general “froze” the order. The demonstration was called off.