The Need For Checkpoints

By now, you've surely heard the accusations that Israel is an "apartheid" country.  That's rather strange since inside Israel, the only difference in treatment between Jews and Muslims is that Muslims are not drafted into the army.  They can enlist, but they are not conscripted.  Apartheid was the South African practices of separate laws, separate living places, and general separation between whites and blacks in South Africa.  There is nothing like that in Israel.

What Israel does have is a barrier/wall which generally runs along the old pre 1967 borders of the country.  Palestinians who live in the West Bank have to go through checkpoints before they can enter into pre-67 Israel.  The barrier and checkpoints were put in place after the Palestinians ran a campaign of terror attacks against Jews and Jewish targets inside pre-67 Israel.  Construction of the barrier/wall effectively ended those attacks.

It's important to understand why these checkpoints are necessary.  Just this morning, the Israeli border police manning the checkpoints found a group of six Palestinian men from the city of Nablus who were crossing into the Jerusalem region while carrying bombs, knives and Molotov cocktails.  The men were arrested on suspicion of terrorism and a possible major terror attack was thwarted.