Israel Reopens Hebron Checkpoint As Gesture to Palestinians
A checkpoint near Hebron has been reopened after 12 years, but local Palestinians are skeptical of the "goodwill gesture."
After the start of the second intifada in 2001, the Israeli military closed the main road connecting Hebron, the largest West Bank city, to the dozens of villages and towns south of the governorate. It cited security reasons, so the couple of hundred Jewish settlers in the Beit Hagai settlement, established in 1984, to go about their daily lives without encountering any Palestinians.
The road remained blocked, and the Harayiq checkpoint, named after the area it was built on and sometimes called Haggai, assumed a quasi-permanent status, hindering the movement of some 200,000 to 300,000 Palestinians in the surrounding communities. After the end of the intifada, there were no longer security justifications for the continued closure of the road, but this closure of one of two entrances to Hebron designated for Palestinians — the 10 others made inaccessible by them — dragged on for 12 years. The checkpoint was finally reopened in July 2013, freeing residents from Dura, Sammou’, Thahiriyeh, Yatta and other villages of having to take an alternative route that added dozens kilometers to their journeys.
“The Harayiq road is the [lifeline] for the villages and towns to Hebron,” Yousef Itmeizi, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society’s youth center, told Al-Monitor at his office in Hebron. “We won’t forget that the reopening was due to the sustained international pressure from organizations and individuals.”
Itmeizi went on to say that during Ramadan, the checkpoint would only be opened from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., as agreed between the Israeli Land Administration and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
