Commentary:
This author sent the following message on Twitter relating to this story; Police Pull Over 5 Palestinians With Jewish Religious Items on Highway 1 [Near Beit Shemesh, Latrun] two days ago:
Can some1 tell me how illegal Palestinians infiltrate with Jewish religious items, w/o work permits?
Today, a RT (Re-Tweet) was sent:
RTCan some1 tell me how illegal Pals infiltrate with Jewish religious items, w/o work permits? See Y: http://tinyurl.com/100RdblksOff
Basically, this query relates to so-called “goodwill gestures” noted in The Jerusalem Post piece below which put Jewish lives at increasing risk via Arab terror attacks [MB}:
IDF to Remove 100 West Bank [sic] Roadblocks, by Herb Keinon and Yaakov Katz (Jerusalem Post)
Excerpts:
IDF sources said the 100 roadblocks would be gone by the end of the week.
Israeli diplomatic officials said the removals were not connected to Mitchell’s meeting on Wednesday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and that Netanyahu had told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that it was in Israel’s interest to help the Palestinian economy in the West Bank.
At that meeting, the prime minister said Israel would move ahead and lift restrictions independent of what the Palestinians would do, taking into account security considerations, and that facilitating the Palestinian economy was an Israeli interest.
While Israeli sources said there was no direct link with Mitchell’s visit, they added there was an indirect connection because an improved West Bank economy was good for the diplomatic process.
“Israel had previously removed nearly 150 West Bank roadblocks since Netanyahu took office on March 31.”
Netanyahu and Mitchell met for the second time in two days on Wednesday, and – in an indication that an agreement was still elusive – scheduled yet another session for Friday morning.
Mitchell held another round of discussions in Ramallah on Wednesday and was scheduled to travel to Jordan for talks there on Thursday.
Sources close to the prime minister said it was not clear whether a three-way meeting of Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and US President Barack Obama would take place next week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, and that whether there would be a meeting depended on the outcome of Mitchell’s current regional swing.
Mitchell is trying to put together a package to enable a relaunch of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.
The package would have a number of components, including a settlement construction moratorium for a set period, normalization gestures from the Arab world, and defining parameters to guide the negotiations once they start.
For instance, the Palestinians are reportedly interested in a commitment that an agreement will be reached within two years, and there is speculation that if the US provides such a guarantee, the Palestinians will agree to sit down with Netanyahu even if he does not agree – as they have repeatedly demanded – to end all settlement construction.
Israel’s position on this has been relayed to Washington, which Israeli officials said “understand it completely.”
The plan to remove more… roadblocks, first revealed in The Jerusalem Post in July, received final approval earlier this week from Defense Minister Ehud Barak, on the recommendation of head of the civil administration Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai and OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni.
Shamni proposed making the humanitarian gesture to the Palestinians ahead of Sunday’s Id-al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan.
IDF sources said it would be the largest single removal of roadblocks since Israel began easing restrictions on the Palestinian population.
The temporary obstacles block off main highways from smaller roads that lead to dozens of Palestinian villages… military sources said.
“This will have a significant impact on the lives of the Palestinians,” one officer said. “It will enable them to travel on highways that had been blocked off to Palestinian access for a number of years.”
Many of the roadblocks are located on roads that connect to Route 60, one of the main roads in the West Bank, which leads from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south.
Over the past two years, the army has gradually scaled back its operations in the West Bank, in parallel to the continued successful deployment in Palestinian towns of battalions trained by US security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton in Jordan. Israel had previously removed nearly 150 West Bank roadblocks since Netanyahu took office on March 31.
The improving security situation… has led to a significant rise in real estate prices.
According to news reports, housing prices in Palestinian villages and towns have risen by hundreds of percent, primarily because of the reduction in security checkpoints and the opening of more roads to Palestinian vehicles.