That’s a reminiscent photograph, isn’t it – of a disenfranchised minority, now forced to ride not at the back of the bus but in a completely segregated one? I mentioned last night that Israel’s Ministry of Transportation introduced separate buses for Palestinians and Jewish settlers traveling between Israel and the West Bank, after the latter complained to the government that Arab passengers were a threat. Oren Ziv reports and provides photos of the scenes yesterday:
Such measures may be shocking to those unaware that in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, separate-but-unequal bus lines already exist, as detailed by Mya Guarnieri. But, as with the many forms of de facto discrimination in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, these buses are not legally segregated. So predictably, Israel’s transportation minister insists that, even with the new bus lines, “Palestinians entering Israel will able to ride on every public transportation line, including existing lines in Judea and Samaria [Israeli terms for the West Bank occupied Palestinian territories]“.
A simple poignant anecdote:
Back on the 210 bus to Eyal, Middle Eastern music was playing to a half-full bus of middle aged men who fit a profile that is classified as a low security risk. “It’s ironic,” notes Mussa Mohammed, a tile layer from Nablus. “Inside Israel we are free to ride the buses and train, but on the way back to our homes in the West Bank we are separated out.”
Jake Wallis Simons is wary of the word “apartheid” and tries to place the move in context of Israel’s balancing act between combating terror and protecting civil rights:
The question, as with my experience at Ben Gurion airport, is where one draws the line. In Israel, this matter is debated frequently and officially by moral philosophers and religious figures, particularly when it comes to military operations. They get it wrong sometimes, and spectacularly so. But often, on a day-to-day basis, they get it right.
Nevertheless, it has to be noted that the timing is strange. Apart from the blast on the bus in Tel Aviv during the last Gaza offensive, there hadn’t been a suicide attack on Israel’s bus network for six and a half years, which is a striking figure given that 29,000 Palestinians commute to Israel daily.
Anna Lekas Miller calls it is symptomatic of an already “separate but equal” system:
[S]egregation between Israeli and Palestinian passengers on public transportation is hardly new. In Jerusalem, the “Central” bus station operates buses connecting Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Dead Sea and several Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank. These buses do not have to stop at checkpoints—as the passengers are Israeli citizens, soldiers and settlers. Some of these buses—the settler buses—are heavily subsidized by the Israeli government, and thus often travel the city half empty. It’s easy for these buses to have a set schedule. The bus station itself is indoors, air-conditioned and even equipped with a Kosher McDonalds.
Aeyal Gross compares the new policy to a 2009 move to bar Palestinians from using a key highway in Israel, which Israel’s courts struck down as illegal:
Differing circumstances aside, the policy reversed by the High Court in the case of Route 443 is similar to the Transportation Ministry’s new policy regarding certain bus lines, insofar as both involve the development of a means of transportation for the citizens of the occupying state and its separation from the local population. This violates the rules of international law whereby occupation is a temporary situation only, and the occupying power must administer the territory for the benefit of the local population.
In this sense the bus issue is only one more component of Israel’s de facto annexation of the territories, an annexation accompanied by the creation of a regime of segregation – which is of course unequal – between Jews and Palestinians.
Corey Robin juxtaposes the Haaretz report with the text of Plessy v. Ferguson.
(Photo: Two Palestinian activists sit inside as Israeli bus as it rides between a bus stop outside the West Bank Jewish settlement of Migron, near Ramallah, and a checkpoint leading to Jerusalem, on November 15, 2011. Palestinian ‘Freedom Riders’ reenacted US civil rights movement’s boarding of segregated buses in the American south by riding Israeli settler buses to Jerusalem. Several Israeli transportation companies operate dozens of lines that run through the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, many of them subsidized by the state. While it is not officially forbidden for Palestinians to use Israeli public transportation in the West Bank, these lines are effectively segregated, since many of them pass through Jewish-only settlements, to which Palestinian entry is prohibited by a military decree. By Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images.)
The Dish 