The issue of segregated buses in Yehuda and Shomron has become one of media prominence. On Wednesday 2 Sivan, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced the start of a 3-month pilot program during which the PA (Palestinian Authority) residents and residents of communities throughout Yehuda and Shomron would ride separate buses.
For the past years tens of thousands of PA residents, including those with work permits and countless illegals, have been permitted on the Jewish buses. While this facilitated their travel time into Green Line Israel significantly, it led to frequent overcrowding, sexual assaults against women on these buses, and friction between the populations.
MK (Bayit Yehudi) Moti Yogev attacked those opposing the segregated busing, calling their objections “hypocritical and irresponsible”, adding that “Anyone objecting to the PA residents traveling on their own buses is simply unaware of the realities of the situation”.
While Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Wednesday, 2 Sivan announced he was going to reinstate separate buses for the pilot program, within a few short hours he and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the segregated bus program is being placed on hold.
Clearly the prime minister is concerned with Israeli liberals and the opinion of the international community as such a policy would be perceived as racist in the eyes of the Western community.
Ya’alon on the other hand, responsible for the nation’s security, is painfully aware of the reality as a former IDF Chief of Staff. The calls for “peace with the Palestinians” do not change the current reality, which includes a prohibition of Israeli Jews from entering PA autonomous areas or riding PA buses. This ban by the IDF is due to the hard facts; that an Israeli entering a PA areas is in life-threatening danger. However Israel is expected to endanger its Jewish citizens by permitting PA residents to enter Israeli areas and travel the same buses.
Deputy Defense Minister (Bayit Yehudi) Eli Ben-Dahan spoke in Knesset in support of the segregated bus lines, explaining the need for such a reality. However the prime minister decided to override him as he and Ya’alon announced later Wednesday morning.
Yogev, a retired IDF colonel confirms this, stating the situation that has resulted from the desegregated buses is untenable and PA residents must once again be banned from riding the same buses as Jewish residents.
Ben-Dahan addressing the Knesset on Wednesday morning
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
the PA is the most apartheid area in the world,Israel isn’t obligated to provide transportation for non-citizens!the PA can use some of the money it pays to terrorists to run its own bus lines and pay their electric and water bills!!!
Even the right of Free Speech is curtailed if there is danger coming about from it. You can’t scream fire in a movie theater. Same would apply to the buses in Israel. Israel is seperating the peoples because of the danger not because of racist reasons(they’re not saying palestians are an inferior race).
The reality is that this would be harmful for Israels image in the world; as much as the reality is that having aspiring terrorists on the buses places citizens in mortal peril. Bibi knows the international community better than the citizens; he therefore did what was preferable to them.
Sounds to me like Netanyahu must have had a talk with Obama.