WADI AL-NAR CHECKPOINT, West Bank, 28 June 2007 — Peace activists yesterday urged Israel to dismantle checkpoints controlling movement within in the West Bank to improve the lives of its 2.5 million Palestinian residents. The call was made by Israel’s Peace Now organization in a new report two days after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised at a regional Middle East summit to significantly improve freedom of movement in the territory.

“If the Israeli government is serious about negotiations with the Palestinians, the easiest thing to do is to ease the movement in the West Bank by removing internal checkpoints that affect directly the daily life of Palestinians,” Hagit Ofran, a Peace Now official, told reporters.

“The price that we are paying for the full control of the West Bank, through the internal checkpoints, is all very high,” she told a news conference at Wadi Al-Nar, which controls movement between the north and south West Bank.

“Through these internal checkpoints, they try to control the West Bank, they try to control the movement inside the West Bank but this is not necessary on a daily basis for the security of the Israelis.”

Peace Now said there were 560 Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints, with 35 controlling access into Israel, 43 considered “internal” checkpoints within the occupied Palestinian territory and 467 classified as permanent fixtures.

“These roadblocks restrict the freedom of movement for the majority of Palestinians, as a short journey between areas is turned into a trip with lengthy waiting periods at each checkpoint,” the report said.

For example, the 30-kilometer road trip between the northern West Bank towns of Nablus and Tulkarm, which should take 25 minutes on an open road, is lengthened by another two hours owing to checkpoints, Peace Now said.

Olmert told a four-way summit in Egypt with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday that his government would “improve the freedom of movement of the Palestinian population in (the West Bank) in a significant manner.”

Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said it had sent Olmert a 15-point plan to ease Palestinian movement in the West Bank, listing roadblocks and obstructions that should be dismantled immediately. “The list includes obstacles to travel that seem to have no security value, or which cause disproportionate harm to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” it said in a statement.

“It is hard to decide whether they result from foolishness or perhaps cruelty, specifically in light of the prime minister’s statement that Israel is not indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians,” it added.

Meanwhile, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview published yesterday Egypt will send its security delegation back to Gaza “when things calm down” and then resume its mediation between Palestinian factions.

Egypt withdrew the delegation on June 15, the day after the Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah, and the Egyptian government said this was because there was no legitimate authority in Gaza.

Mubarak told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth: “The security delegation left Gaza and so mediation could not continue. But when things calm down the delegation will go back and we will continue to talk with them.”

In other interviews he gave on Tuesday, Mubarak indicated a sudden shift in Egyptian thinking about the takeover of Gaza. He predicted that Hamas and Abbas would have to come to terms when the two sides “come to their senses.”

In the interview with the Israeli newspaper, he said that negotiations between Hamas and Fatah should lead to an agreement on a single Palestinian security apparatus and full powers for the president of the Palestinian Authority. The new Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, insisted on Tuesday that Hamas must accept his government’s authority before it will consider calls for negotiations.

Responding to Mubarak’s proposal of dialogue, he told Reuters in the West Bank city of Ramallah: “These are key principles that everyone has to accept for there to be any meaningful steps taken: First, Hamas has to relinquish any and all claims to legitimacy as a regime in Gaza. Second, there has to be acceptance of the constitutional measures taken by the president.”