By Xinhua,
Amman : The number of roadblocks in the West Bank has increased by seven percent in less than eight months, despite the Israeli pledges to ease the mobility of people and goods in the region, Jordan’s state news agency Petra reported.
The roadblock number has increased to 607 on April 29, from 566in last September, including a newly construction of 144 new closures, according to a release by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem (OCHA) Friday.
The report said that this restricts the movements of people and goods in the area.
It highlighted the role of the international community in urging Israel to ease the restrictions on access and mobility of citizens in the West Bank as part of the peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
On Saturday, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of keeping obstructing any progress in the peace negotiations with the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman of the Palestinian Presidency, told reporters in Ramallah that “the increase of roadblocks in the West Bank proves that Israel is not serious and still puts obstacles before the ongoing negotiations.”
The peace talks between Israel and the PNA, which envision an independent Palestinian statehood before U.S. President George W. Bush steps down in January, have made little tangible progress since relaunched at the U.S.-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland last November.
During a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in March, Israel pledged to remove 50 West Bank roadblocks. Israeli authorities later claimed they did away with 61 roadblocks, but OCHA said only 44 had actually been removed and that most of those were of little or no significance.
Israel started installing the roadblocks during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s in order to curb militant attacks on targets in Israel. The barriers increased during the second uprising that began in 2000.