West Bank Barriers Keep Rising Despite Promises of Relief
Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 05:25PM Commute Becomes 'Daily Humiliation'
Karim Edwan's skepticism about the U.S.-backed Middle East peace process is rooted in his morning commute.
To travel from his home in this West Bank village to his job as an emergency room doctor, the 35-year-old must take at least two cabs, skirt a barbed-wire fence, climb a dirt mound, talk his way through multiple Israeli checkpoints and remove his shoes for a full-body security check.
Before the obstacles were imposed, the trip to his hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus took 30 minutes. Now it takes two hours.
"It's my daily humiliation," he said.
The hope of Abbas and other participants in the Annapolis peace talks last November was that the Israeli-occupied West Bank would become a model for what negotiations could bring.
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