Netanyahu eliminates plan for segregated buses in Israel

EAST JERUSALEM , West Bank, May 20 (UPI) -- Israel called off plans Wednesday, to adjust its West Bank municipal bus schedules, that would have effectively separated Israelis from Palestinians.

The defense military began a three-month pilot project Wednesday, to segregate Palestinians who enter Israel daily to work, from Israelis who charge the Palestinians are a security threat. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled the program soon after it began, calling it "unacceptable."

Human right groups called the plan racist and comparable to South African laws separating black and whites in its apartheid era.

The plan would have required Palestinians traveling to Israel to board special buses which, at the end of the work day, would return them to the same checkpoint through which they entered Israel. It would have denied them access to buses which do not travel to those checkpoints.

Israeli settlers in the Samaria area of the West Bank have sought a return to using separate buses for Israelis and Palestinians, a plan eliminated four years ago, when the Israeli government deemed it safe for the groups to travel together. About 500,000 Israeli Jews live in over 100 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.