Covid

MASKING SAVES LIVES

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

No Room for Civility at Israeli Checkpoints

"Every day at the Israeli checkpoint going from my home in Bethlehem to visit TIME's Jerusalem Bureau, I see a sign that makes me laugh. Written in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, it says: "Peace Be With You."

"It's a pretty sentiment, suitable for the birthplace of Jesus Christ. The sign, put up by the Israeli Tourism Ministry, may be written in Arabic script, but its message of peace is clearly not meant for Arabs — not for me, not for the hundreds of Palestinian laborers, school kids, businessmen, teachers, people going to see doctors, who must run the daily gauntlet of Israeli security checks. A tourist who wants to go from Bethlehem to Jerusalem can make the journey by car in 15 minutes. I must go on foot and, depending on the mood of the young Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint, the trip can take an hour, two, three. Or sometimes, if there's a security alert, they simply close down the checkpoint to all Palestinians. Peace Be With You.

"It's humiliating, and hard not to interpret this as a collective punishment against Palestinians. First, I walk into a long, wire mesh cage that runs along a 20-ft.-high concrete wall which, on the Palestinian side, is smeared with graffiti. On the wall, someone has painted a big pair of scissors as if to say: Cut along the dotted Line. If only it were that easy.

"Then comes the Striptease, the long conveyor belt where you have to put all your belongings before going through the security check. Some days they make me take off my jacket, other days, my shoes or my belt. It's very frustrating, especially when you get behind a woman with lots of earrings and bracelets who doesn't know how the machine works — and there are hundreds of people pushing and shoving behind you. I've seen sick people desperate to reach a doctor, or people screaming because they're going to miss their airplane or connection to Jordan, but no matter how hard they shout, it never does any good.

"After that, you have to show your ID and magnetic pass. There are five windows, but only one is ever open, no matter how many Palestinians are trying to cross through. The U.S. embassy people who perform periodic checks to make sure things are running smoothly at these checkpoints should really make surprise visits. Usually, the Israelis know beforehand that the Americans are scheduled for inspection. We can tell because that's when the soldiers open all the gates. But most of the time, there's only one soldier, and you have to be very patient and pretend to be sympathetic while he or she is on the cellphone for 10 minutes talking to a friend or a mother. Otherwise, if you try to hurry along the soldier in the booth, it puts him or her in a bad mood, and it can take a lot longer.

From Voices of Palestine

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