Visualizing Palestine: Where the color of your license plate dictates which roads you can drive on

by on May 29, 2012 15
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(Click on the image below to view it larger, and visit visualizingpalestine.org for a better view. )

Segregated roads
Image: Ahmad Barclay and Polypod, May 2012 for Visualizing Palestine

About Adam Horowitz

Adam Horowitz is Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel/Palestine, Occupation

{ 15 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Woody Tanaka says:
    May 29, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    This is a powerful graphic. This cancer of zionism must be destroyed and replaced with a humane system, the sooner the better.

  2. seafoid says:
    May 29, 2012 at 12:44 pm

    Image: Ahmad Barclay

    One of Israel’s biggest problems is that the 4th generation of palestinians it’s shafting is better educated than the people who run the hasbara.

  3. seafoid says:
    May 29, 2012 at 12:45 pm

    Another great graphic would be airport access

  4. American says:
    May 29, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    What should we deduce?…that you can take the people out of the ghetto but you can’t take the ghetto out of the people? Some day Israel’s walls will be used to keep them in instead of keeping other people out…..all this reminds me of the sound a reel of old film makes when it runs out…clackety, clackety, clackety..in a dark room.

    A new ghetto is rising, a phoenix emerging from the Holocaust ashes…
    by Roy Tov

    Egypt: In late 2012, Israel will finish building a new fortified fence between the countries. The mighty fence cannot be climbed and features electronic systems allowing the regional military headquarters to find breaches in real time. The construction of the fence was decided in 2010 by Prime Minister Netanyahu. “I took the decision to close Israel’s southern border to infiltrators and terrorists. This is a strategic decision to secure Israel’s Jewish and democratic character,” he said to the Hebrew media on January that year. Again, he ignored non-Jewish citizens.

    New Wall Being Built by Israel
    Between Israeli Misgav Am and Lebanese Kfar Kila

    Lebanon: In April 2012, Israel began replacing the fence on its border with Lebanon with a 5 to 7 meter high cement wall between the Israeli town of Metulla and the Lebanese village of Kila; where the violent border clash between the countries took place in August 2010. It follows the design of the new fence along the Egyptian border. There are plans to upgrade the entire border fence with this new contraption.

    West Bank: The West Bank Barrier is still under construction and facing a myriad of legal problems since Israel is not building it on its side of the border, but on the Palestinian one. The barrier is a fence with vehicle-barrier trenches surrounded by an on average 60 meter wide exclusion area along 90% of its length, and an 8 meter tall concrete wall along the rest. 12% of the West Bank area is on the Israeli side of the barrier.

    Jordan: I grew up less than a mile from the Jordan River. Yet, seldom could I enjoy its views. When doing so, it was from above—the Jordan Valley features several steps—and at points that were very difficult to access. The feeble fence blocking the access to the river wasn’t the reason for the deprivation; simply minefields filled the entire lower step of the valley.

    Syria: For many years, the fence along the Syrian-Israeli border was the best in Israel. Landmines and electronics secured it. Along the years, the equipment became obsolete. Following the violent events of Naksa Day 2011 (see Casus Belli), when many Syrian citizens were killed in Syria by IDF soldiers shooting from the occupied Golan Heights, Israel began the reinforcement of the old fence.”

    • seafoid says:
      May 29, 2012 at 5:15 pm

      Tower and stockade (Hebrew: חומה ומגדל‎, Homa UMigdal, lit. Wall and tower) was a settlement method used by Zionist settlers in the British Mandate of Palestine during the 1936–39 Arab revolt, when the establishment of new Jewish settlements was restricted by the Mandatory authorities. During the course of the Tower and stockade campaign, 52 new Jewish settlements were established throughout the country. A Turkish Ottoman law, that was in effect during the Mandate period, stated that any illegal building may not be demolished if the roof has been completed.
      The invention of the Tower and stockade system, is attributed to Shlomo Gur-Gerzovsky, founding member of Kibbutz Tel Amal, and was developed and encouraged by the architect Yohanan Ratner. The system was based on the fast construction of pre-fabricated wooden molds, which would be filled with gravel and enclosed with barbed wire fencing. In average, the enclosed space formed a yard of 35 x 35 meters (1 dunam). In the yard a pre-fabricated wooden observation tower and four shacks, providing housing for a “conquering troop” of around 40 people, was erected.

      link to en.wikipedia.org

      Zionists never developed a porch culture even though they live in a climate that would suit it.
      Walls and hostility and the knowledge they are not welcome are in their DNA

  5. HarryLaw says:
    May 29, 2012 at 1:45 pm

    What is depressing is that people never learn the lessons of history, everyone knew Afghanistan was the graveyard of Empires, the Soviets found that out in the 1980′s, the US knew better and are now being kicked out, the South Africans knew better until the World taught them a lesson, now Israel…….

  6. DICKERSON3870 says:
    May 29, 2012 at 4:24 pm

    RE: “Visualizing Palestine: Where the color of your license plate dictates which roads you can drive on”

    MY COMMENT: We’re not just visualizing!

    SEE: “US Funds Apartheid Roads on West Bank” ~ by Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service, 5/24/10

    [EXCERPT] RAMALLAH – The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping Israel to construct an apartheid road infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian West Bank by financing nearly a quarter of the segregated road system primarily for the benefit of Israeli settlers.
    USAID’s figures state that the agency has financed 235 km of roads in the West Bank in the past decade, and is preparing to add another 120 km by the end of this year, reported Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook in the United Arab Emirates paper ‘The National’.
    According to an April report released by the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), USAID has helped build 114 km of segregated roads in the Palestinian territory despite assurances from Washington six years ago that it would not assist in the construction after the Palestinian Authority (PA) protested.
    Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reports that 170 km of roads in the West Bank are either off-limits to Palestinians or highly restricted.
    After the Oslo Peace Accord in 1994, Israel requested the international community to finance 500 km of roads for the Palestinians, later termed ‘fabric of life’ roads, including upgrading agricultural tracks and constructing many underpasses and bridges, at a cost of 200 million US dollars, reported Cook.
    However, donor countries rejected this request due to PA’s protests that the entrenched apartheid-system infrastructure would strengthen the settlements and make their presence a permanent fixture while justifying more expropriation of Palestinian land.
    But it would appear that the PA has been railroaded, at the behest of Israel, into accepting USAID in a take it or leave it scenario. . .

    ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to commondreams.org

  7. American says:
    May 29, 2012 at 4:51 pm

    PURE BULLSHIT…this is clearly a Israeli provocation.

    link to news.yahoo.com

    Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem flag row
    AFP – Mon, May 28, 2012…
    .
    Soldiers on Monday violated the status quo on the esplanade of the mosques in east Jerusalem by raising Israel’s flag, the head of the Islamic Waqf organisation that oversees the compound charged.

    “More than 180 soldiers from a special Israeli army unit today raised a large Israeli flag opposite the mosque of the Rock, which is a grave provocation,” Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib told AFP.

    The sprawling esplanade containing the Al-Aqsa mosque and the adjacent Dome of the Rock in the historic Old City is the third-holiest site in Islam after Saudi Arabia’s Mecca and Medina.

    It is also the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

    Sheikh Khatib said the soldiers entered the esplanade during a visit approved and organised by Israeli police.

    He said he had made a complaint both to the Israeli police and to the Jordanian authorities. Jordan, which has a 1994 peace treaty with Israel, is the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.

    Police spokeswoman Luba Samri confirmed to AFP that there had been an incident but said it concerned “a small flag,” and said that a senior officer at the scene quickly intervened to expel the soldiers from the compound.

    She said they would later face disciplinary measures.

    Israel occupied the eastern sector of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War in a move never recognised by the international community, and later annexed it.

    For Israelis, Jerusalem is their “eternal and undivided capital,” but Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.
    ..

    • Sumud says:
      May 29, 2012 at 9:58 pm

      It sounds like a test run for a repeat of what Ariel Sharon did in 2000.

      When the time comes Israel will do everything it can to derail non-violent protest, because the only solution, the only language Israel can speak is that of violence. They’re getting a very bad name around the world for themselves and the cries of “anti-semites” and “Palestinians are terrorists” have lost their power.

      I expect we will see some really desperate, out there tactics from Israel in the not too distant future.

      • Kathleen says:
        May 30, 2012 at 12:08 pm

        “They’re getting a very bad name around the world for themselves and the cries of “anti-semites” and “Palestinians are terrorists” have lost their power.” Have had and continues to expand their “bad name” around the world. When Israel stops building and expanding illegal settlements in the West Bank and illegal housing in E Jerusalem, decides to abide by UN resolutions, signs the NP’T that they demand that their neighbors abide by…Oh did I say when hell freezes over. Nations and people around the world will feel differently toward the internationally recognized state of Israel based on legal boundaries

  8. Kathleen says:
    May 30, 2012 at 12:09 pm

    Thanks Adam will use this incredible visual . Demonstrating once again Israel’s apartheid state

  9. Kathleen says:
    May 30, 2012 at 5:42 pm

    Adam the Mondoweiss team is on fire for justice. Thanks

  10. Rafi says:
    May 31, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    the Gaza part is all wrong of course, it is not accesible to Israelis at all.

    and in the West Bank, they should have added layers for Area A,B,C, again, the white (and red) roads in Area C are not accesible to Israelis at all.

    you can really see the alon plan in this map, the Jordan Valley in the wider sense, seperated both from the “island” of Hebron and the “islands” in the northen part of the WB, alon later regretted it.

  11. Fredblogs says:
    May 31, 2012 at 4:04 pm

    Desegregated roads sound like a good idea. Once the Palestinians stop attacking Israelis on the roads, it could actually happen. Like most things the Palestinians complain about, the separate roads are a response to the Palestinians own actions. Terrorist attacks on motorists when they had shared roads.