The Controversy of Highway 443

The most common route from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv these days is Highway 1.  It is a major road up to the standards of an interstate highway in the United States.  If you want to take an alternate route, you follow Highway 443.  Highway 443 takes travelers from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv via Modi’in and Beit Horon.  It is closed to Palestinians.

At the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the highway became an easily targeted site for terrorist attacks.  Its proximity to Ramallah and other Palestinian cities led to a series of firebomb attacks and frequent sniper attacks on passing vehicles.

To deal with the violence, the Israeli military closed roads connecting Palestinian villages to the highway and built tall barricades to protect motorists from sniper fire.  The road has remained closed to Palestinian traffic since October, 2000.

On May 29^th, an Israel Supreme Court approved measure to continue the closure will expire.  On that date, the road will be open again to Palestinian traffic.  It is important to look at both sides of this issue.  Groups like B’stelem have been fighting to re-open the road to Palestinians for nearly a decade.  Others, most notably the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center, are petitioning to maintain the closure for the safety of the thousands of Israelis that use the road each day.

I do understand that the road closure is a major inconvenience to Palestinians just like when I-25 was closed for construction through Denver, I was inconvenienced.  I would have been upset, though, if a subset of the population had been allowed to continue using the road while I could not.  I would also have been pretty mad if it lasted for ten years.

However, Israel is not Denver.  The road closure was for a very specific and identifiable reason.  When the closure took place, a huge number of Palestinians were doing their best to murder any Jewish person that crossed their path.  If the path went by their home, it was that much easier.

Today the situation is a bit different.  While Gaza is still a major source of violence, things in Judea and Samaria have calmed.  There are still frequent complaints between Palestinians and those in Jewish areas of Judea and Samaria, but few are violent and deaths are very infrequent.  Israel, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has made steps to improve the economic wellbeing of the Palestinians, and those efforts have begun to pay off.  But that does not mean I have forgotten the Shabbos I spent on Moshav Mevo Modi’in with a high security fence and armed guards protecting me from the Palestinian neighbors.  The entrance to the Moshav is right on Highway 443.

I believe opening the highway to Palestinian traffic is a good idea, but it needs to be monitored closely.  The moment Israeli security forces see any hint of violence from Palestinians on this highway, it should be returned to the status quo that worked for the last ten years.  While I care about the Palestinians have convenient travel options, I care more about Israeli lives.