Forget 443: New Road Would Be Built Exclusively for Palestinians; To Be Called J Street

As frustration mounts on both sides at the Supreme Court's decision to re-open Route 443 to automobiles with Palestinian license plates, the Palestinian Authority has forwarded a proposal aimed at a possible solution. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad unveiled a proposal he had received earlier in the week from a PAC, suggesting that a new road, named J Street, should be built exclusively for Palestinians.

Fayyad painted a picture for reporters that he believes will be satisfactory to Israelis and Palestinians alike. “The creation of J Street is first and foremost in the best interest of the Israeli people. In fact, the people who came up with the idea are Jewish themselves. How can Israel refute the legitimacy of something created for their best interest by their own people? One must conclude that the creation of this road is in alignment with the majority opinion of Israeli society. For the Palestinians, the end of the apartheid state’s apartheid highway is truly a victory. Until now the only contact our people had with this highway was when we were paid to do road work on it”. When questioned by reporters as to how Israel could be an apartheid state if it paid the Palestinian workers wages for their work, Fayyad responded, “I don’t know, I just read it in the J Street proposal”. 

Hadar Susskind, J Street Vice President of Policy, Strategy, and Traffic Congestion released a statement late Sunday that appeared to be more evasive than truthful. “First and foremost we aim to build a road free of those awful road reflectors. That constant click-clack sound drivers must endure on a daily basis is a type of terrorism we will no longer tolerate. We would rather have roadblocks”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, was not satisfied by this apparent smoke-screen put up by the brain-trust responsible for the J Street concept. The project’s President, Jeremy Ben-Ami, was more candid than his colleague when cornered by reporters on his way into his office. In response to a large portion of the Israeli government's demanded for an honest answer, Ben-Ami staunchly insisted that, “this is nothing more than the physical implementation of our long-standing policy. We at the J Street project always have and always will maintain that the best way to resolve any Palestinian-Israeli conflict is through the allowance of Palestinians to plow, drive, and walk all over Israel”.