January 04, 2008	Friday	Zilhaj 24, 1428

JERUSALEM: Israelis and Palestinians are bracing for draconian security measures and traffic chaos next week as preparations gather pace for the landmark visit to the region by US President George Bush.

Streets, city blocks and main highways are to be closed around Jerusalem and cities in the West Bank during the Wednesday-Friday visit, the first by an American president in more than nine years.

“The visit will paralyse Jerusalem,” one Israeli official said. “It will be impossible to move around and get anywhere close to where he is staying and visiting.”

Seeking to soothe tempers in the security-obsessed country, the Israeli government has bought large advertising spots to run in major newspapers apologising ahead of time for any inconvenience caused.

Israeli and Palestinian officials have given little away as their security services grapple with how to ensure the safety of the leader of the world’s sole superpower in densely-populated urban centres in one of the world’s most volatile regions.

But the prospect of the presidential motorcade, accompanied by dozens of security vehicles — not to mention a throng of some 200 journalists — driving through the narrow streets of Jerusalem poses a daunting security task.

Reports say up to 8,000 Israeli police officers and several thousand on the Palestinian side will be deployed during the visit, although neither side has released official figures of personnel involved.

Bush, who visited Jordan in November 2006 and has made several trips to Iraq, is due to spend most of his time in Jerusalem but will also go to the occupied West Bank to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

“This is one of the most complicated security events over the past decade,” Israel’s mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper wrote recently.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office last month set up a special task force to coordinate the visit, while in the West Bank, American security officials have been scoping out the terrain to decide the best place for Bush to meet Abbas.

“There are still negotiations with the Americans over the place where Bush will meet Abu Mazen,” Palestinian information minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters this week, referring to Abbas.

“I expect the meeting will be in Ramallah, but Bush’s visit may include other cities,” like Bethlehem and Jericho, he said.

A Palestinian official said on Wednesday that Bush was planning hold a three-way meeting in Jerusalem with Abbas and Olmert, in addition to separate talks with the two leaders.

According to press reports, the main highway leading to Jerusalem through the Judaean hills west of the Holy City is expected to be shut down on the day of Bush’s arrival, with traffic re-routed on to a road in the occupied West Bank with access for Israelis only.

In Jerusalem itself, entire blocks around the historic King David Hotel — where the president is staying — will be closed to pedestrians and all unauthorised cars towed from the area.

His entourage is expected to take over 1,000 hotel rooms in the city including at the King David, which was bombed in 1946 by an underground Zionist group seeking to overthrow British rule in Palestine in an attack that killed 91 people.

People who live near the King David are to receive special tags from the Shin Beth internal security service to be able to access their homes, according to media.

And some of the city’s busiest streets will be closed to both cars and traffic during his stay.

The security headaches of guarding — and hosting — an American president are familiar to both Israelis and Palestinians.

When Bush’s predecessor Bill Clinton visited in December 1998, some 15,000 Israeli law enforcement officers were deployed in what was billed at the time as one of the biggest police alerts in the country. Nearly as many Palestinian law enforcement personnel were also mobilised in the occupied territories.

In addition, hundreds of secret service agents backed up by officials from the CIA directed the stringent controls in place during the visit.—AFP