Israel bans Palestinian travel in West Bank

ISRAEL yesterday enforced a "total ban" on Palestinian travel in much of the West Bank and sealed off a chunk of the Gaza Strip with tanks in response to Palestinian attacks on Israelis that killed 13 people over 24 hours.

Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said restrictions on Palestinian movement would be tightened further, and that troops would “maintain a much bigger closure than what we are doing now.”

The new restrictions were imposed after a bloody 24 hour period in which a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up an Israeli bus and gunmen carried out shooting attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Thirteen people were killed in these attacks, including 11 Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, and two women from the Philippines. Three assailants also died.

Yesterday, a car blew up in northern Israel, killing one person and injuring another. Police and rescue officials said it appeared the dead passenger was a Palestinian militant en route to carrying out an attack.

Israeli TV said the driver of the car was an Arab Israeli, who picked up a hitchhiker not knowing he was a militant. The driver was injured.

The area of the blast, near the Arab Israeli town of Umm el-Fahm, southeast of Haifa and near the West Bank, is not far from the site of Sunday’s bus bombing and several other recent attacks.

Israeli troops yesterday arrested Mazen Foqha, a senior Hamas activist, on suspicion that he supplied the explosives for the bus attack. Palestinians said Foqha headed the Hamas military wing in the Jenin district.

Ben-Eliezer said Israeli security forces have thwarted 90% of planned Palestinian attacks, and have intercepted nearly 140 suicide bombers.

The minister did not say over which period the would be attackers were caught.

Under the new travel ban, Palestinians will not be able to drive in the northern half of the West Bank, between the towns of Nablus, Jenin, Qalqiliya, Tulkarem and Ramallah, the army said. Some movement will be permitted in the southern West Bank, including the towns of Hebron, Bethlehem and Jericho.

“We are in a situation of total closure in the area of Samaria,” Ben-Eliezer said, using the biblical name for the northern West Bank.

“Nobody enters and nobody leaves. There is no movement between the towns and villages.”

Stringent restrictions on Palestinian travel have been in place since the outbreak of fighting in September 2000, with Palestinians confined to their communities for extended periods as Israeli troops try to prevent terror attacks.

However, exceptions would be made in humanitarian cases, the military said.

In Gaza, about 25 tanks took up positions on the main north-south road, cutting off the southern town of Rafah and an adjacent refugee camp from the rest of the strip. The army said it imposed the blockade to prevent attacks on Israelis. Rafah has been a flashpoint of violence.

Palestinian attacks on Israel have killed 27 people since an Israeli air strike on July 22 killed leading Hamas militant Salah Shehadeh and nine children in Gaza.