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.
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.
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.
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.
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. more
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