West Bank villagers ordered to apply for permits

Palestinians in the small West Bank village of Jubara have been warned by Israel that they must apply for special permits to remain in their homes.

Soldiers began posting notices on telephone poles and at checkpoints around the village of 300 residents today.

The military has already trapped them in a tiny pocket of land between Israel and its West Bank security barrier, giving them only sporadic access to their schools, clinics and fields across the fence.

The new notices did not specifically mention expulsion, but Palestinian officials and villagers said they understand this to be the implied threat.

“This is where my livelihood is. If they kick me out of here, I cannot care for my nine children,” said Burhan Odeh, 38, who has olive and orange groves in Jubara.

UN officials said the order was unprecedented in Israel’s 36-year occupation of the West Bank. “It really turns the right to live in your own home into a privilege,” said David Shearer, head of the local UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

For many Palestinians, being expelled from their homes and villages is one of the worst fates they could imagine – worse, even, than imprisonment. Many fear Israel plans to force them into tiny enclaves in the West Bank and claim the rest of the land for themselves.

The army said the new order was not part of a secret expulsion plan, but an effort to keep militants from crossing the new security fence to carry out attacks in Israel.

US President George Bush has expressed concern about the security barrier, saying it could interfere with conditions for setting up a Palestinian state.

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat called the new orders “a depopulation programme.”

The problems created by the barrier were visible throughout Jubara, near the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem.

Rubbish was piling up because bin men were unable to enter.

Farmers were forced to hire people on the other side of the fence to pick their olives, sometimes paying them with half the harvest.

Children trying to get to school had to wait for soldiers to open a gate in the fence.

Dozens of children aged six to 15 waited after school in the hot midday sun behind the mustard yellow gate, some for more than an hour, until soldiers standing nearby let them cross back into the village.