New checkpoints throughout the West Bank! Alert the NGOs! Oh, wait..

There were many new checkpoints set up today that severely restricted Palestinian movement - but they weren't set up by Israel:

Palestinian security forces set up checkpoints outside major West Bank cities early on Tuesday to prevent public school teachers from attending a major demonstration in Ramallah.

Palestinian security checkpoints were installed on all roads outside the cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh. Officers at the checkpoints stopped all vehicles travelling to Ramallah for inspection and turned back buses carrying teachers to the city.

A large numbers of security officers were deployed around government buildings in Ramallah, where teachers were planning on protesting.

An estimated 20,000 Palestinian teachers demonstrated in Ramallah last week to call for the implementation of a 2013 agreement guaranteeing teachers' rights.

Near the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem, Palestinian security checkpoints near the Beit Jala junction and the town of Dar Salah on the main road towards Ramallah, turning back vehicles carrying several hundreds of teachers who were heading to the demonstration.

Palestinian security checkpoints were also erected outside Tulkarem in the northern West Bank for the same purpose.

“We are not opposing a policy or a regime; all we want is to be able to eat our bread in dignity,” a representative of Bethlehem-area teachers told Ma’an, adding that Palestinian security officers seized the driving licenses and identity documents of bus drivers.

Teachers in Bethlehem say that after security officers stopped their buses and ordered them to turn back, many teachers tried to travel in private vehicles, only to encounter more checkpoints further along the road.

In the northern West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses told Ma'an that Palestinian police officers threatened to revoke the licenses of taxi drivers who carried teachers to Ramallah.

Another source, who requested anonymity for safety reasons, told Ma'an that Palestinian security in Nablus also threatened to punish bus companies if they took teachers to Ramallah for the demonstration.

This is a good indication of how liberal and free an independent "Palestine" would be when there are no Israelis in the area at all. The PA went to extraordinary lengths to limit the number of teachers that could attend a protest - what other repressive things would they do? It's not as if the teachers are throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the police - from all indications the only thing that the protesters were doing that irritated the PA is that they were protesting against the PA.

Hamas, of course, is much worse that even the PA, violently breaking up any anti-government demonstrations.

Anyone who thinks that a Palestinian state would be a wonderful place for Palestinians to live is fooling themselves.

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