Dead End

Good luck trying to move goods in and out of Palestine

At JoTrans at the Dead Sea in Jordan last month, Palestinian Minister of Transport Dr. Mashhour Abudaka began his speech insisting that he would avoid discussing politics. But he couldn’t help it. How could he sidestep the fact, after all, that Israel took Qalandia Airport (renamed Atarot Airport) in 1967, that there is a “total siege in Gaza Strip” and that Palestinians are not allowed to transfer goods from one truck to another?

“We don’t actually have door-to-door in Palestine,” he said. “We have back-to back.” This means that truck shipments of food and supplies entering Palestine from Israel, or Israel from Palestine, must be unloaded and reloaded onto a different truck at a back-to-back area.

Dr. Munib A. Younan, a Bishop with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem, in his newsletter, estimated that a shipment travelling from the West Bank town of Jenin in the North to Hebron in the South, also in the West Bank, would have to be unloaded and reloaded as many as 14 times. Abudaka also explained that Israel has set up at least 650 fixed blockades on the road.

Abudaka added that Yasser Arafat International Airport (formerly Gaza International Airport), is totally destroyed. “Even rehabilitating it will cost a lot of money.” The airport, which opened in 1998 with US$86 million of funding from Japan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Germany and Morocco, was shut down in 2001 after Israeli military forces destroyed the radar station and control tower. In January 2002, the same forces bulldozed the runway. Israel cited concerns that the airport allowed for the transport of threatening goods such as weapons. In 2007, bedouins began to set up tents on the property, and more recently Israelis have suggested setting up their own neighbourhoods there. The closest airport is currently El Arish International Airport in Egypt.

Gaza’s sea port is incapable of accepting containers, according to Abudaka. “There are plans for Gaza Port expansion on paper,” he explained. “But nothing has been implemented.” Israel and the Palestinian National Authority signed a deal to rebuild the port in September 2000, but not a quay has been laid.

Plans for redeveloping pieces of the historic Hejaz Railway which once ran to Haifa, as well, are stalled. The Ministry of Islamic Affairs, according to Abudaka, is holding onto the land. “If the Palestinian Authority were to take over ownership of the land, it would open it up for the Israelis to take over,” he says.