Every morning I ride the bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem and every evening I return. This roughly 15 km commute between the de facto capital of Palestine, Ramallah, and the capital and sacred holy city in the hearts of Palestinians, Jerusalem, is a journey through the Palestinian reality of Israeli occupation. This commute should take only 30 minutes, but typically I arrive at the office of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA) nearly two hours after I begin.
I live in Kafr 'Aqab a village just south of Ramallah in an apartment building on the main road between Ramallah and Qalandiya checkpoint. My work day begins by picking up a service taxi (multi-person taxi) to go to Qalandiya, and I typically arrive at the checkpoint 10 minutes after stepping out of my apartment building. After completing the quickest and easiest part of my journey to Jerusalem, I am forced to navigate through Qalandiya checkpoint, one of the best and most famous examples of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Until about a month ago, traveling through Qalandiya was relatively easy. Every morning, I would say to the taxi driver "an duk laws a macht" and then hop out of the taxi and get into a bus going to Jerusalem. Being an international I could go through Qalandiya on the bus and simply show my passport and VISA to the soldier who checks IDs and passports at the vehicle checkpoint (see slideshow to the right). Women with babies, school-aged children (depending on the mood of the particular soldier), men and women over 50, and those with medical conditions also were allowed to ride through the checkpoint on a bus.
However, in mid-March, the ride through policy was abruptly changed and all Palestinians and internationals were then required to walk through the checkpoint terminal. These changes occurred with absolutely no notice, explanation, or justification. No soldiers or police at Qalandiya either would or could tell anyone why the ride through policy had been halted. Now instead of it taking 15 minutes to load up the bus at the checkpoint and ride through, I often spend 45 minutes waiting in line and walking through checkpoint security, including four different turnstiles.
The walking terminal resembles a cross between an entrance to a concentration camp and a livestock corral, and the entire terminal is comprised of either concrete or metal. After entering a 'waiting area' where a sign eloquently states "please keep the terminal clean," I take my place at the end of one of three lines of people waiting to enter three corresponding metal corrals (picture above left) leading to a manned checkpoint station where you pass through a metal detector, have your bags x-rayed, and have your identification examined (picture above right). After spending 15-20 minutes waiting in line in the 'waiting area' and in the corral, I pass through a turnstile and line up behind another turnstile leading to the manned checkpoint station (see slideshow to the right). Each of these stations have on average 15 people waiting behind the turnstile.
It is in these lines that I have witnessed some of saddest and most humiliating and degrading scenes in my life. Often at the busiest times, when there are roughly 25 people waiting at each station, all sense of order and compassion for others breaks down. Everyone starts pushing and shoving to enter the turnstile with 2-3 people squeezing into each revolving space on the turnstile, which are designed to fit one person. These are men who are trying desperately to get to work on time, students in primary and secondary school and university who need to make it to class, women with children younger than six who are simply trying to make it through the chaos safely. I've seen teenagers getting in shouting matches with adults, I've seen fights (the police blow their whistles to break them up), I've seen children start crying after getting crushed between people shoving their way into the turnstile, I've seen women with babies get pushed out of the way, I've seen people forced to go to another station for no apparent reason after waiting in one line for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, what are the Israeli soldiers and police who are monitoring the checkpoint with assault rifles doing to help? Literally, nothing. Their ambivalence and lack of concern towards Palestinians going through the checkpoint reveals much about the root of the conflict. This is particularly apparent when one tries to pass through the 2nd turnstile into the manned checkpoint station where your ID is checked by a soldier in a 'control room' behind bulletproof glass. The soldiers behind the glass control access to the station and electronically open and close the turnstile, allowing only three people in at a time. Often the soldiers wait 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, or however long they wish before opening the turnstile to allow people through, thus slowing the process tremendously and increasing the number of people in line.
When you look through the metal bars into their 'control room,' you see the soldiers eating food, laughing, and talking on their cell phones, completely unconcerned about the lives of the people behind the turnstile. On one occasion, when I was waiting to walk through the metal detector and have my passport checked, a Palestinian girl no more than 15 years old walked out of the interrogation room bawling followed by the checkpoint commander. While I was waiting for five minutes to pass through, he stood by her while she continued to cry in full view of all the people waiting in line behind me.
Incidents such as this and those described above are particularly disturbing because they are in sharp contrast to Arab-Palestinian culture. This culture, which is based on a tremendous respect for elders and a preferential treatment of women with children, fractures and is fundamentally debased as a result of checkpoints such as Qalandiya.
I will never forget the words of man at Qalandiya when after being stuck in a corral together for 15 minutes he turned to me and said, "Where is Obama now?"
I encourage you to click on the photograph slideshow on the right, which contains a series of images of Qalandiya that will give my description of the checkpoint a visual perspective. I have also provided a map (created by Imad Farrah) at the top of my blog that outlines my bus route from Ramallah to Jerusalem.
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