[sustran] News from Israel Meeting

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From: ecopeace at netvision.net.il
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 98 16:08:41 PDT
Subject: Press Release - Transportation Issues
To: ecopeace at netvision.net.il

From:  EcoPeace Middle East Environmental NGO Forum

PRESS RELEASE
August 2, 1998

Media Roundtable Meeting on Highways and By-Pass Roads.
Tel-Aviv, July 30, 1998.

On  July 30, 1998 in Tel-Aviv,
EcoPeace, the umbrella organization of Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian
and Egyptian environmental NGO's organized a lunch seminar on the
issue of Israeli - Palestinian transport. Guest speakers Dr. Yaacov
Garb, post doctorate fellow of the Hebrew University, and Dr. Jad
Isaac, Director General of the Applied Research Institute in
Bethlehem, harshly criticized current trends in transportation
planning and policy.

Dr. Garb declared that Israel is at a transportation crossroads. "Over
the last decade the country has been embracing the kind of mass-
motorization trends that other advanced countries are, belatedly,
coming to regret and attempting to reverse. The number of vehicles
on the country's roads are dramatically on the rise while the use of
public transport is rapidly declining."

Dr. Garb commented that the next 5 years were crucial to shape Israel's
transport future. "Because car- based transport competes with more
sustainable alternatives for funds, passengers and land use paterns,
investments made over the next 5 years will shape Israel's transport
future." Road No 6, the Trans-Israel Highway was cited as a critical
example of misplaced priorities.

Dr. Isaac in his presentation, documented the use of roads and
transport policy as a tool of Israeli occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza. "The By-Pass roads are creating a salad out of the West
Bank, isolating Palestinian towns and villages from one another and
creating for Israel both an internal and external security belt.
Instead of integrating Israeli and Palestinian transport, the
Israeli policy is to create transport apartheid on the roads." Many
of the By-Pass roads are accessible to Israeli yellow plate cars
only and Palestinian cars are categorically excluded from entering
Israel. "Palestinians now associate new roads with an attempt to
create political boundaries, with confiscation of land, with demolition
of houses and with fragmentation of their future state."

During the discussion that followed, all participants agreed that only
an integrated Israeli/Palestinian transport network would satisfy
environmental and efficiency demands. The current policy of highly
weighted towards road-building, whether Highways in Israel or By-
Pass roads in the West Bank was recognized as totally contrary to
both peoples' interests.