Israel should remove 10 major West Bank checkpoints to give a badly needed boost to the Palestinian economy and can do so without compromising security, a group of Israeli ex-generals and Palestinian officials said in a joint report Wednesday. The 10 checkpoints cause major disruptions to Palestinian trade and movement, said the report, whose authors include two former chiefs of Israel's military government in the West Bank. The findings came just days after the World Bank warned that the Palestinian economy is not likely to grow this year, largely due to continued Israeli restrictions on movement, and despite massive foreign aid. Representatives of donor countries meet in London later this week to review the aid effort _ $7.7 billion (¤4.95 billion) pledged over three years. The bank warned that more aid may be needed if the Palestinian economy doesn't recover from several years of downturn. A recovery depends on an easing of restrictions, the bank was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.
