JERUSALEM—For the first time since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising 15 years ago, Palestinian doctors and medical staff working in Israeli hospitals will be permitted to drive into Israel from the West Bank in their own cars.
The lifting of the ban, which was imposed when Palestinian militants began exploding car bombs in Israeli cities, is among a series of conciliatory gestures towards the Palestinians taken by Israeli authorities since the reelection of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister last month.
During the election campaign, Netanyahu made a number of remarks perceived as anti-Arab, including rejection of a Palestinian state, for which he was sharply criticized in Washington and elsewhere. His populism succeeded in winning right-wing votes and reversing the defeat predicted by some polls. Analysts have said conciliatory steps that followed, analysts, are intended to reduce tensions with the Palestinians and to appease critics at home and abroad.
A week after the election, Israel announced that it would permit the transfer of millions of dollars of tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority—collected by Israel on behalf of the Authority—which it had frozen four months before in retaliation for the Authority’s referral of Israel to the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. According to an Israeli statement, the decision to unfreeze the funds was made "for humanitarian reasons and out of an overall assessment of Israel’s interests."
A State Department spokesman said that the United States welcomed the move.
The Israeli army and other security branches opposed the freezing of funds because it undermined the Palestinian Authority’s ability to pay salaries to its security forces, which, in turn, threatened their cooperation with Israeli security forces. The two groups share a common enemy in Hamas, which has strong roots on the West Bank and which threatens the Palestinian Authority, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, even more than it threatens Israel.
The coordination includes intelligence sharing, according to Palestinian sources. The Palestinian Authority detains more suspected Hamas operatives in the West Bank than Israel, according to media reports.
The coordination is also important to both sides in dealing with the charged relations between Palestinians and settlers in the West Bank and ensuring general calm in the area.
Officers from the two sides confer regularly. In the same vein, Israel has recently given permission to the Authority to deploy uniformed and armed police in East Jerusalem suburbs for the first time in more than 20 years. It has also permitted, after a long delay, the hookup of water pipes to the first new Palestinian city to be built on the West Bank, a source of Palestinian pride.
An Israeli security official said this week that the permission given to medical personnel to enter Israel in their own cars, particularly useful to those working at night when there is no public transportation, might be extended to businessmen and other Palestinians. He also said that the number of workmen granted permits to work in Israel has been increased.