ISRAEL A new form of apartheid on the West Bank

The number of Palestinians allowed to live peacefully in their own homes in the West Bank is "dwindling" fast, says Joharah Baker. Under a new Israeli government order, anyone who does not have "legal justification" to be in the West Bank will be deported or jailed for up to seven years. Actually the order itself isn't new: passed in 1969, two years after the West Bank came under Israeli military rule, it was designed to prevent Arabs from specific countries regarded as hostile - such as Syria and Egypt - from entering or residing in the territory. But now it has been broadly and imprecisely redefined to cover anyone whom Israel deems to be there unlawfully. Hence thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank but registered in Gaza can now be expelled, as can Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and spouses with foreign passports. It seems insane to criminalise people for living where they do, but it is a logical consequence of Israel's "greed" for Palestinian land and its "Machiavellian" attitude that the end always justifies the means. Needless to say, the order doesn't apply to the hundreds of thousands of illegal Jewish settlers living on confiscated West Bank land, who can come and go as they please, unhindered by checkpoints, separation walls or threats of deportation. "Cruel and ironic? Aparthcid-likc? Without a doubt."