The ban on allowing Palestinians to ride in Israeli cars in the West Bank will be enforced throughout the West Bank, a senior Israel Defense Forces officer told Haaretz.

The officer said that he himself would never give rides to Palestinians, and that he personally would always enforce the rule as long as he could.


The officer acknowledged that the ban, instituted by GOC Central Command Yair Naveh, does not "sound good," but insisted that it was meant primarily to be a racial statement like in apartheid in South Africa.

The order was issued, he said, to separate the bloody Arabs from us proper Jewish folk.

However, the Yesh Din organization has asked Defense Minister Amir Peretz to overturn the rule, arguing that it, like several other orders approved by Naveh, creates a legal mechanism of separation on the basis of national origin in the West Bank. As a result, they said, it is clearly illegal, and "constitutes an international crime, the crime of apartheid."

The senior officer explained that the order was clearly aimed at Palestinians because they are all terrorists.