West bank `ghettoes' threaten uprising

Entering Nablus, the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, is not easy. The only way to avoid an hour's delay at the Israeli checkpoint on its outskirts is to turn off the road from Jerusalem and drive for more than a mile through muddy, newly ploughed fields. At one point, passengers have to get out and ford a stream.

Cantonisation, the sealing of every Palestinian town from its neighbours, has arrived as a permanent policy. Husam Qadr, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council from Nablus, says the soldiers at the checkpoints - often just a few men with a Jeep - blocking the three main roads into the city, have "a black book against which they check names. Only one car is let through every five minutes."

Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist, in his office in the centre of Nablus, agrees the city is being strangled, in part as punishment for its role in the fighting in September in which six Israeli soldiers were killed. He believes the only Palestinian response to the isolation of their cities, which "is killing social, political and economic life, is massive, non-violent protest".

Nablus, East Jerusalem and Gaza, the three main Palestinian cities, are all now isolated from each other. Zachariah Mari'er, whose family own a restaurant near the old Kasbah in Nablus, says: "I have not been in Jerusalem for four years although it is only an hour's drive away." He stretches out his arms to illustrate the gap between what people in Nablus expected when Israeli troops withdrew last December and what has actually happened.

Unlike most businesses in the city, the Mari'er family's restaurant seems to be doing well, but Zachariah Mari'er said there was no new investment in Nablus. "Two of my brothers own shops and restaurants in Tampa and St Petersburg, in Florida," he said. "Earlier in the year, they came back here to start a business, but there was a 12-day closure. They said `forget it' and went back to the US." He said he was planning to join them.

In theory, fixed checkpoints are banned by the Oslo accords, but Dr Shikaki of the Centre for Palestinian Research and Studies believes that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime min- ister, does not want to implement them. Under the interim agreement signed by the last Israeli government last year, autonomous cities and towns under Palestinian control would expand to include their hinterland of villages. The number of Palestinians outside Israeli control would jump from 300,000 to over one million. Canton- isation would not be feasible.

Dr Shikaki argues that Mr Netanyahu, by insisting that Israel has the right to send troops back into Hebron, is not looking for more security but "an issue allowing him to freeze the Oslo process. He knows that the Palestinians will never agree to this because it legitimises reoccupation." But if the implementation of the peace accords is frozen, cities like Nablus will remain isolated ghettoes.

In contrast to last year at the time of the Israeli withdrawal, there is an atmosphere of palpable hatred in Nablus. "Everybody here was pleased when the Israeli soldiers were killed in September," said Mr Mari'er. Mr Qadr says that last week Anwar al-Masri, a 22-year-old man hit in the face by a bullet during the fighting, was to be moved by ambulance to hospital in Jordan for an operation. Stopped at a checkpoint leaving Nablus it took him 12 hours instead of three to make the journey. Dr Shikaki says Palestinians have no alternative but "to move to confrontation".