Palestinians Block Road over Settlers, Access

Palestinians briefly blocked a West Bank highway on Tuesday in protest at settler attacks and to demand its opening to local traffic, an AFP correspondent and the army said.

The correspondent said around 100 Palestinian demonstrators, along with Israeli and foreign activists, gathered on route 443 near Beit Ur village, five kilometres (three miles) west of Ramallah, blocking traffic on a key road linking Jerusalem with the coastal plain.

He said they were protesting against the growing number of settler attacks on Palestinians, which tend to peak during the olive harvest which began last week.

They were also demanding that Israel open route 443 to Palestinian traffic, he said.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military confirmed that traffic was delayed by a group of "about 30 Palestinian and Israeli demonstrators," saying troops had used "riot dispersal means" to disperse the protest.

She also denied the road was off limits to Palestinians, saying it was "open to everyone."

For nearly a decade, route 443, which runs through the West Bank and provides a crucial secondary link between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, was closed to Palestinians because of Israeli security concerns.

It was reopened in May 2010 following a High Court ruling, although rights groups say the change was largely cosmetic, easing access between a handful of villages, but because several key checkpoints remained, Palestinians were unable to use the road to reach Ramallah.

Since the start of the harvest on October 9, Israeli rights groups say hundreds of Palestinian olive trees have been uprooted, burned down or had their fruit stolen by Jewish settlers.

NGOs and U.N. bodies have expressed concern over the growing prevalence of settler violence towards Palestinians, with U.N. statistics indicating that more than 90 percent of complaints are not addressed by the Israeli authorities.