News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Quartet envoy Tony Blair said Tuesday that a series of Israeli “good-will gestures” to the Palestinian Authority that includes the removal of several checkpoints will not endanger Israeli security because, according to Blair, Judea and Samaria are not a part of Israel. The relaxed security in Judea and Samaria will ease traffic from the north to south and west to east, he said, “not the traffic west into Israeli territory.”

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens live in Judea and Samaria, many of them in areas that will be affected by the new security arrangements. Israeli residents of the Hevron region say they will protest the removal of a checkpoint near the “Sheep Junction” south of Hevron that they believe is crucial to their security. No other plans to protest the latest “gestures” have been announced to date.