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by Kathy Kamphoefner,
Jerusalem Representative

Thursday was a five-checkpoint day. Because a suicide bomber killed 11 and injured more than 40 Israelis in a bus bombing near the house of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. I had a 10:00 am meeting in Ramallah, so I left the house in Jerusalem at 8:30 am. The “service” van (a shared taxi) took a round-about route to the Old City of Jerusalem, because police patrols were out already. They set up impromptu checkpoints according to “security needs.” The police will pull over as many servees as they can in East Jerusalem. They check the drivers’ license, the taxi registration, and demand identification from all the passengers. So we took an alternate route to avoid the impromptu checkpoint set up at the servece routes’ usual destination point.

I changed to a servece for Qalandia, the main checkpoint on the way to Ramallah, where I would have to change taxis again. But today, no one was going through directly to Qalandia, as the Border Police were not permitting anyone through the Rom checkpoint, a mile before Qalandia. Ordinarily, they don’t check people leaving Jerusalem at Rom or at Qalandia—after all, the Israeli army wants us all, Palestinians especially, to leave Jerusalem.

We passengers had to leave the taxi a good half-mile before the Rom checkpoint, as at least twenty cars were already waiting in line to pass, so traffic was at a standstill. A Border Policeman stopped me for an ID check at Rom, and I asked what the reason for the extra checks was today. “The Arabs make bomb in Jerusalem,” he said. A little further on, I got in another servece van that was waiting to take passengers on to Qalandia.

At Qalandia, the traffic was also at a dead standstill, as many trucks, buses, taxis, and personal cars turned the corner just in front of the checkpoint for other parts of the West Bank. There is no separate pedestrian walkway, so you have to walk between the barely passable narrow ways between the slowly rolling lanes of traffic.

When the checkpoint came in view, it was obvious it would take a long time to pass; so, just before 10:00 am, I called the organization I was to meet to say I would be delayed at least another half-an-hour crossing Qalandia. The lines were long and crowded body-packed tight into several lines between cement barricades about a meter high and two meters apart. It felt like being a rat in a maze. I was losing ground in line, as I’m not used to pushing so much. I cuddled up with a group of half a dozen women who helped push each other through the lines.

In the past, there were usually separate lines for men and women. But not today. The Israeli army had not bothered to set them up. So groups of women huddled together and steered each other along, protecting ourselves from contact with men. Even so, it was so crowded that a woman was at my breast, another at my side, and another at my back in direct physical contact. It was so crowded that I rarely had two feet on the ground as I stood—there simply wasn’t enough room for both. It was so crowded that I acquired bruises on my right hip, which was against the barricade, from all the pushing.

In the crunch were elderly men and women, parents carrying small children, a lame man, and someone in a wheelchair. All had to negotiate the frighteningly packed lines, however difficult for them.

The women chatted and joked about the situation. We dreamed up stories of what we might answer when the soldier asked where we were going and why. “My father is ill, so I have to see him.”

“My auntie has died and I have to go to the funeral,” we said, trying to imagine what will get us to the other side of the checkpoint. The soldiers were searching everyone’s bags and everyone’s person. After concocting a whole set of plausible stories, the woman next to me said, “I know, let’s speak English to the soldiers. Maybe that will work.”

“It’s no use,” I replied in Arabic, and we all laughed.

After an hour of the excruciating crowd crunch, we felt our destination was almost at hand. But no! --the Israeli army decided to open another line just next to us, and we had to merge into that line. People murmured about the unfairness of it. But that meant the body crush became even worse, and it was difficult to stay on one’s feet at all. We clung tighter to each other and pushed each other forward.

After an hour and fifteen minutes of this torture, I finally was called from the line to be searched by the woman soldier. “This is outrageous!” I told her. There needs to be a separate line for women.”

“This is an emergency setup—we had no time for that,” the fifty-something female reservist said. “They can set it up.”

“No they can’t—you know that.” I said. “Everyone knows you are in charge of Qalandia, so it’s your responsibility to make it happen. To force men and women to wait so close together like that—it’s against your religion, it’s against my religion, and it’s against their religion. It’s inhumane.”

“But suicide bombings are not against their religion,” the soldier said. “Oh yes, they are. Suicide bombings are against every religion,” I said. I passed through the checkpoint and negotiated for a private taxi to take me to my appointment. The line crush had taken an hour and fifteen minutes--but there is usually no checking people on the way out at all.

“There is army inside Ramallah today, because of the bombing,” the taxi driver said, driving a round-about way. When we returned to the main road, there was another impromptu checkpoint. “Where are you going?” the soldier asked, checking identification for the driver and me. The soldier said we would not be able to go further, since I did not have a diplomatic passport. But when he checked with his officer, he had to wave us along.

The crowd had thinned by the time I headed back to Jerusalem at 12:30 pm, so the checkpoint was perfunctory. The soldier that searched my handbag even surprised me when he handed the bag back, by saying, “Sorry.”

I took the taxi towards Jerusalem. The new route is a brand new Israeli-only road that goes around the Arab areas into Jerusalem from the north. At the checkpoint en route, we sat another five minutes while the soldiers recorded our identification numbers, and the police checked the taxi’s licenses.

In East Jerusalem, I changed to a servece to get home. What relief I felt—almost home! But at the bottom of the hill we were pulled over by a female police officer, the taxi driver’s licenses were checked, the van door had to be opened, and we all had to produce our identification again.

Now you may think, yes, but the Israelis are entitled to manage their security—after all, there was a serious suicide bombing and eleven human beings lost their lives. True, the tragedy is clear; the loss of life is unjustifiable. AND two wrongs don’t make a right. The suicide bomber is already dead. If other persons helped him, they are not going to travel through checkpoints with evidence—they’d find another way home. The only thing the checkpoints accomplish is harassment of Palestinians, a kind of collective punishment for the bomber’s crime.

This is a regular occurrence, these checkpoints, the organized humiliation of a whole people, the restriction of their human rights in so many ways: freedom of movement does not exist for Palestinians. The Palestinian economy is floundering as goods cannot be transported to market with the repeated closures, checkpoints, and curfews. These army policies have helped push unemployment to 60% in the West Bank. Family’s income have dwindled to very little; people are becoming increasingly more desperate, while international aid agencies struggle to bring in enough emergency food assistance for them—an artificial famine has been created by the Israeli government’s occupation policies.

Like the Israeli solider I met at Qalandia, many Israelis feel it's right to persecute all for the sins of a very few. But this doesn’t improve Israelis’ security—it worsens it. The only real human security is good relationships—and these policies only sew more frustration and hatred, creating the perfect psychological climate for more suicide bombers.