Monday, May 24, 2010

US Funds Apartheid Roads on West Bank


By Mel Frykberg

"RAMALLAH, May 24, 2010 (IPS) - The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping Israel to construct an apartheid road infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian West Bank by financing nearly a quarter of the segregated road system primarily for the benefit of Israeli settlers.

USAID’s figures state that the agency has financed 235 km of roads in the West Bank in the past decade, and is preparing to add another 120 km by the end of this year, reported Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook [posted on PP]in the United Arab Emirates paper ‘The National’.....

But human rights organisations have questioned the extensive military and financial aid given to Palestinian security forces by the Americans while the routine abuses of Palestinians by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ security forces are ignored.

Political opponents of the pro-West PA are regularly abused and tortured in PA jails with a number dying in custody under questionable circumstances.

According to Britain’s ‘Guardian’ newspaper Palestinian security forces have been working closely with the CIA to torture Palestinian dissenters. When Palestinians killed a settler last December, Abbas’ forces worked "overtime" to find the culprits arresting hundreds in the process....."

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