Israel for the first time in eight years reopened a key West Bank road to Palestinian traffic Friday morning, a military spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said, DPA reported.
Road number 443, which just runs north of the main highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, links several western West Bank villages to the central Palestinian city of Ramallah.
It had been closed off by Israel to Palestinian vehicles in 2002 following a series of shooting attacks by Palestinian gunmen on Israeli motorists.
Palestinians had to use small bypass roads to travel from one village to the other along the road, or to reach Ramallah.
Although they will now be able to use the road to reach some of the villages alongside it, access to Ramallah - the West Bank's economic, cultural and political hub - will only be possible via small side routes.
That is because the Israeli military, citing security reasons, has erected a new roadblock barring entry to the city. The new obstacle "will prevent suspects without authorization to enter" Jerusalem's northern Jewish neighbourhoods," military sources said.
Israel's High Court of Justice, in a December 2009 ruling, declared the general closure of the road to Palestinians illegal, because it was built in the 1980s on expropriated Palestinian land with the argument that the road would benefit mostly Palestinians.
Local Palestinians say they plan to protest the partial reopening.
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