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Few Palestinian workers

return to jobs in Israel

JERUSALEM: Only a handful of Palestinians have returned to jobs in Israel since the closure after a suicide bomb attack sealed off some 60,000 Arab workers at the end of February, an Israeli official said on Monday.

Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's coordinator of activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said the first five Palestinian workers crossed into southern Israel to work in agriculture on Sunday.

"Only 12 workers came to work in Israel today," he said on Monday. Dror said issuing permits was a slow process due to extensive security checks, and only 400 were handed out last week.

Israel sealed off the two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank after the first in a wave of Muslim suicide bomb attacks on February 25. In four bombings, 58 people were killed in Israel over nine days.

Last week the government said it would issue 3,000 permits to Palestinians over the age of 45 allowing them to return to their jobs in Israel.

Prime Minister Shimon Peres told reporters on Monday that Israel had two goals: "One is really to uproot the dangers of terror and the other effort is to reopen gradually the closure."

Palestinians have condemned the closure as collective punishment against a law-abiding population for the actions of the militant Muslim groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have vowed to kill the peace process.

The ban has caused severe hardship and the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has said it indirectly caused the deaths of eight Palestinians by delaying medical treatment.

Peres, speaking to reporters while meeting Jordanian airline officials in his office, said that while he wanted to ease the closure, "we are getting continuously warnings about the attempt to infiltrate Israel. That's our greatest problem.

"We don't want to see anybody suffering, starving or paying the cost because of terror, but also we cannot permit more acts of terror. It can really endanger the whole peace process," he said.

Peres said he thought some 5,000 work permits were being issued to people in Gaza and "several thousand" to Palestinians in the West Bank.

Dror said his office, in charge of issuing the permits, had heard nothing about increasing their number. Peres's spokesman was not immediately available to comment.-Reuter