Specifically, the residents are against the new stickers the army is planning to distribute to residents to enable passage through the large border-crossing type checkpoint being constructed at the entrance to Gush Etzion from Jerusalem.
Kiryat Arba's local council met on February 12th and concluded unanimously that it is "opposed to the army's objective of differentiating and separating the residents of Yesha [Judea and Samaria] communities from other citizens of the State of Israel, and has therefore decided not to distribute the stickers to drivers living in Kiryat Arba. In addition, it will join with the other local councils in Yesha to frustrate this objective."
A protest will take place this Friday against the border crossing being built next to the Gush Etzion tunnels. A convoy of vehicles will leave Kiryat Arba at 9:00 AM and be joined by residents of Gush Etzion communities in their cars along Highway 60 starting at 9:30. All will then head to the new border crossing together.
The council says it opposes the stickers for the following reasons:
• The combined strangulation of the Partition Fence and the fences around Jewish communities in the region, compounded by bypass roads and the marking of residents' vehicles, creates an atmosphere of being "aliens within our own country."
• The stickers represent a paradigm created by the government whereby Jews are foreigners and Arabs are seen as the indigenous population. "The Arabs are seen as natives in the land while we are seen as living here because of the mistakes of various government administrations."
• "By affixing these stickers to our windshields, we will be signaling our de facto consent to the partition of Israel" and the creation of border crossings along the residents' drive home. "The destruction of Gush Katif started with the establishment of the Kisufim crossing."
• "While resident vehicles would pass swiftly through the checkpoints, the thousands of daily guest, commercial, and service vehicles would be forced to wait in long lines for individual inspection. It wouldn't take long until non-residents would simply stop coming. Furthermore, Arabs will quickly learn to forge the stickers, thereby worsening, rather than improving, our security."
On local email lists, some residents object to the protest campaign, asking, "Why do we have to fight every single thing the government decides to do?" They point out that stickers with the name of specific communities are already used to facilitate easier identification of residents at the entrance to their towns.
Some residents responded sharply, saying the Partition Wall was the construction of a new "ghetto" and the stickers were merely the modern-day version of yellow stars for the local Jews.