Thank you, Mitch Plitnick, who represents B'tselem, the Israeli human right organization in Washington for bringing this insanity to my attention.

A group of Israeli settlers have filed a suit against Israeli authorities because the so-called security checkpoints -- designed to prevent terrorists from getting into Jerusalem -- are making them late for work, school, the gym, whatever.

There are some 600 checkpoints; more are added all the time. A tiny minority of that number are on the border between Israeli and Palestine (a few dozen or so). These are designed to protect Israel against terrorists who might cross into Israel. The rest are internal checkpoints designed to impede Palestinian movement from one Palestinian town to another. The checkpoints -- along with the "settlers only" superhighways -- divide and dice the West Bank into small pieces, giving the settlers a viable homeland while preventing the Palestinians from reclaiming the economic and social viability that they had before the occupation.

How ironic is it that the settlers, for whom Israel has constructed an entire system of internal barriers to Palestinian movement, now are filing suit because sometimes the border checkpoints (designed to deter terrorism) inconvenience them!

Palestinians are not just inconvenienced by the checkpoints. The checkpoints have caused thousands to lose their jobs (they can't get to them). They prevent kids getting to school. And they have caused innocent people (including women in labor and babies) to die because they were prevented from getting to the hospital. See this from Israel's Yedioth Achronoth. Or this list of victims (and their testimonies from Btselem).

On the other hand, think of those settlers who were so late to work that they lost a good parking space..