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<h1 class="article-title">'Jim Crow' segregated bus system made
official by Israel</h1>
<div class="article-subtitledetails">
<span class="article-details">
<span class="article-detail"><img class="icon"
src="cid:part1.08040604.05030507@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> Wednesday May 20, 2015 11:49</span><span
class="article-detail"><img class="icon"
src="cid:part2.08080107.09090400@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> by Celine Hagbard<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.imemc.org/article/71655">http://www.imemc.org/article/71655</a></small></small></b><br>
</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="article-intro">Israeli officials announced that
beginning on Wednesday, the segregation that has been commonplace
on buses traveling between the West Bank and what is now Israel
has been made completely official, and no Palestinians will be
allowed to travel on buses with Jewish Israelis.</blockquote>
<p class="article">This discrimination based on ethnicity is a
violation of international human rights conventions, but Israel
justifies its racial and ethnic profiling based on 'security'
concerns.<br>
<br>
This new restriction will apply to Palestinians from the West Bank
who have work permits inside Israel -- permits which are
increasingly difficult for Palestinian workers to obtain from the
Israeli military authorities who control all aspects of life in
the West Bank.<br>
<br>
An unnamed official told reports with Agence France Presse that
the segregated bus system would be put in place as a three month
pilot project, and the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told
the Israeli Army Radio that he had agreed to the system in order
to have "better control of the Palestinians" who enter and leave
Israel for work each day.<br>
<br>
The Palestinian workers will ride on the same buses as Jewish
Israelis while inside Israel, but once they reach the
Israeli-constructed Annexation Wall, they will have to exit those
buses and board Palestinian-only buses in a system that critics
say is reflective of the American South in the post-Civil War
period known as the Jim Crow era, during which segregation and
discrimination against non-white members of the population was
legal.<br>
<br>
In 2011, a group of Palestinian peace activists carried out a
"freedom ride" action to draw attention to the already segregated
bus system in the West Bank by boarding buses meant for Jewish
Israelis only. They were arrested. At the time, Palestinians were
not explicitly banned from riding on those buses, but it was an
unspoken rule that they could not step on board, because the buses
were headed to Israeli settlements built on land seized from
Palestinians and then walled off for the exclusive use of
Israelis.<br>
<br>
At that time, Bassal Arraj, who participated in the action, told
reporters, "Under Israeli law we are forbidden to visit Jerusalem.
It’s a racist law like the Jim Crow laws and the apartheid laws in
South Africa." <br>
<br>
The ban on travel to Jerusalem remains in place four years later
and now, the segregated bus system has been officially made into
law, according to the Israeli defense minister.<br>
<br>
This adds to the more than fifty laws already on the books in
Israel that directly discriminate against non-Jews -- most
recently, a discriminatory law upheld by the Israeli Court on May
5th allows the Israeli government to completely demolish two
Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Negev that have been there
since well before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 --
due to the fact that these villages are 'unrecognized' by the
Israeli government. </p>
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