OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, May 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Palestinians are to be banned from moving between West Bank towns without special permits, under Israeli plans to tighten restrictions on travel in the Palestinian occupied territories.

It is feared that the proposals, which were outlined to humanitarian organizations and donor countries earlier this month, will turn the West Bank into a network of closed “cantons” and threaten the viability of the Palestinian economy, British daily newspaper, The Times, reported Monday, May 20.

Israel insists that the permit plan is a necessary security measure intended to stop Palestinian attacks in Israeli cities.

The eight big West Bank towns covered are Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin, Nablus, Jericho, Al Khalil (Hebron), Tulkarem and Qalqilya, Israeli officials said. No Palestinian holding West Bank permits would be allowed to travel to Jerusalem and no movement would be permitted at night, between the hours of 7pm and 5am.

European Union sources said last night that the proposals had not yet been formally put to the Palestinian Authority, but that they were well advanced and were already being implemented at some checkpoints. They said that the permits would make operating in the West Bank far harder for humanitarian organizations and donor groups who employ Palestinians as drivers, and for local officials.

People would be required to obtain and renew permits from the Israeli authorities.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat Sunday, May 19, postponed a meeting with his central election committee to discuss planned polls, as committee members from Gaza were unable to make it to the West Bank, due to Israeli travel restrictions.

There would also be permits for the transport of goods, which would be carried out by being unloaded from trucks at points on the outskirts of the town and loaded into another vehicle.

“The system would be exactly the same as in Gaza and would in effect turn the West Bank into eight little ghettos,” one Palestinian official said.

“We know this is their policy. How soon and how tightly it is going to be implemented on the ground, we do not know,” another diplomat said. “But if it is implemented, it will mean the absolute end of any functioning Palestinian economy.”

Major David Beaudoin, a spokesman for Israel’s office for coordinating activities in the Palestinian territories, said however, that the intent of the plan was the exact opposite of that claimed by its detractors.

It would remove the uncertainties of Palestinians arriving at checkpoints not knowing how closure policies would be imposed by different Israeli army units on different days, he claimed.

“It’s quite fantastic the lengths to which the donor community will go to distort an honest attempt to ease the plight of the Palestinian population,” he said.

“We don’t want the closures. They are not there because it is a hobby. They are there because Israel thinks they are necessary to try to curtail state-sponsored terrorism. But even in the dire security circumstances Israel is facing we are still looking for ways to facilitate the movement of Palestinians in order that they can lead their day-to-day lives.”

Observers and analysts dismissed Beaudoin’s claims, describing them as ‘twist of facts’. “The matter is simple, Israel withdraws from Palestinian occupied territories, Palestinians will then stop their resistance operations, problem solved,” an Egyptian analyst told IslamOnline Monday, May 20, asking not to be named.

“Should that happen, Israel will not need fences, walls or checkpoints. But to call such apartheid measures ‘an honest attempt to ease the plight of the Palestinian population’ is really ridiculous, to say the least,” he added.

The measures follow the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the centers of towns such as Jenin and Ramallah. Troops remain on the outskirts of each population center ready to launch raids at short notice.

Sources at the World Bank put the cost to the Palestinian economy of Israeli closures at $2.4 billion (£1.6 billion) during the first 15 months of violence, from September 2000 to December 2001. This was before Israel’s recent large-scale military aggression in the West Bank in March and April, during which towns were under curfew for several weeks.

At the Qalandiya checkpoint, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, security has been tightened in recent days, with new concrete waiting pens erected. One Israeli reservist confirmed Sunday that the new permit restrictions were already in force.

Only Jerusalem residents with blue passes and those holding special permits were permitted to pass, with holders of green Palestinian or orange West Bank identity cards barred unless they had special permission.

Angry Palestinians said that they had been forced to travel miles through back roads to evade the checkpoints, the Israeli soldier said.

However, some Israeli military top officials in the Israeli stood last week on top of the garbage heap between Kfar Sava and Qalqilyah, looking east. It was the second trip in two weeks that Defense Ministry Director General Amos Yaron had made along the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank.

Last week's trip focused on the area between Umm al-Fahm-Anin and Tulkarem-Qalqilyah, the narrow hips of the country that have become its Achilles heel as Palestinian infiltrators have followed the same paths used by Palestinians looking for work.

The first trip, two weeks ago, was to the northern part of the West Bank, and this week, a third fact-finding tour will take place in the Jerusalem area, Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz reported.

At the end of last week's visit, one of the officials spoke about the financial costs of a fence. There is no alternative but to shorten it in various places, and have some stretches as short as three kilometers long, he said.

Yaron, a former major general, didn't like that. He is currently the coordinator between the government, army, Shin Bet and police, with the civil agencies that will actually build a fence. "If there's no ongoing solution on both sides of the fence, and if the fence isn't contiguous, then we'll have a problem," he says. "It would be like building a steel door in the middle of the desert."

The National Security Council, headed by reserve major general Uzi Dayan, has formulated its recommendations for the basic path for a fence along or near the Green Line.