The UN Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday over current tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.<br /><br />Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the planning process for new settlement homes in East Jerusalem will be speeded up.<br /><br />Palestinians are also expected to bring up the dispute over Jerusalem’s holiest site.<br /><br />A separate row has broken out over a plan it is said will effectively ban Palestinians from using certain Israeli-run buses in the West Bank.<br /><br />Reports say that from December, Palestinian workers entering some areas of Israel from the West Bank will have to pass a checkpoint on their way home as well as on their way to work.<br /><br />This, it is argued, would mean they cannot use direct buses.<br /><br />Jewish settlers have welcomed the move.<br /><br />“It’s important for me to say it: the situation in the buses is not normal. (There is) A lot of sexual harassment, a lot of humiliation by the Palestinians to the Israelis,” said Oren Hazan, chairman of the Youth Forum at the Ariel settlement in the West Bank.<br /><br />The plan was put forward by Israel’s Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon whose ministry has cited security reasons, even though military officials reportedly believe there is no threat.<br /><br />For an Israeli human rights group, it is discrimination.<br /><br />“It appears the Minister of Defence isn’t content with moving Palestinians to the back of the bus; he wants to remove them from the bus entirely. It’s time to stop hiding behind these technical arrangements, like this pilot plan, and simply admit that this is thinly-veiled pandering to settler demands for segregated buses,” said Sarit Michaeli from the B’tselem group.<br /><br />Other Israeli authorities are scrutinising the plan. <br /><br />The Justice Minister Tzipi Livni has reportedly called it “segregation” which could “escalate to illegal discrimination”. <br /><br />The Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has demanded an explanation from the defence minister.
