Israel has decided to close the West Bank to Palestinian entries and departures for 11 days, from Oct. 3-14, including the seven-day Sukkot holiday. This closure exposes the big lie of the occupation: the so-called economic peace touted by the right as an alternative to the two-state solution.

The decision to seal off the West Bank for such an unusually long time, following the Sept. 26 terror attack that killed three Israelis in the settlement of Har Adar, imposes an involuntary furlough on the 63,000 Palestinians who will be unable to reach their workplaces in Israel. (This figure was initially 73,000, but the Agriculture Ministry obtained permits for 10,000 laborers.) Assuming the average Palestinian supports four family members, then almost 300,000 people — including the elderly, women and children — have been deprived of over one-third of their modest income in the past month. Once again, it transpires that closures are not simply a security measure or a populist and punitive deterrent move, but a sophisticated control mechanism over the economy of the West Bank and the welfare of its Palestinian residents.

In addition to the Palestinians granted permits to work in Israel, some 32,000 others are allowed to work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. For some reason, they were spared this time the collective punishment imposed on their fellow Palestinians banned from traveling to work in Israel. Hard to believe that Israeli security officials screened them and decided they did not constitute a security threat to Israelis in the settlements, while the others were a hazard to Israelis in their own land. This is especially puzzling given that the excuse for such a lengthy closure was the terror attack in Har Adar by a West Bank Palestinian who had worked in the settlement for years and was described by astounded residents as “one of the family.”

As mentioned above, authorities exempted some 10,000 Palestinians employed as agricultural laborers in Israel from the closure. According to an Israeli military spokesman, these lucky souls are employed in vital sectors and cannot be spared for so many days. I looked long and hard and found no evidence to suggest that the Israeli economy was in dire need of street sweepers in the settlement town of Ariel or fruit pickers in other settlements any more than the Israeli coastal town of Netanya needed construction workers or the Northern Galilee region needed heavy machinery operators.