This week I had my share of checkpoints, even more than usual. But the
events that transpired at the Qalandiya and Bethlehem checkpoint made
me look further than my usual “hurry up, I need to get home attitude”.
This was a far more daunting wake-up call.
After a wonderful, fun-filled wedding in Bethlehem, my husband and I
began the drive home. A non-stop direct drive from Bethlehem to the
village of Bir Nabala, northwest of Jerusalem should take no more than
half an hour. That was in the days of yore, obviously when Israeli
checkpoints did not plague our entire lives. That night, we left the
wedding hall and arrived at the infamous “Rachel’s Tomb” checkpoint
about 10 minutes later. Even though it was after midnight, there were
still at least 15 cars waiting to cross. Twenty minutes later, it was
our turn. I confidently handed my and my husband’s ID cards to the
Israeli soldier and waited for the nonchalant flick of his wrist,
indicating that we could pass. I am a veteran checkpoint goer obviously,
so I figured I know the ropes.
“You can’t cross in the car. You must walk through the checkpoint,” the
soldier informed me. After I ranted and raged for a while explaining
that I cross Qalandiya all the time in the car he simply said, “The
rules are different here and the rule here is that you must get down.” I
pushed him further as to the rationale behind making me get down when I
was in the car with my husband, in the middle of the night with a valid
residency permit to Jerusalem. “I didn’t make the rules, I just enforce
them,” he said calmly and turned away. So, without further ado, I
climbed out, walked the winding, empty checkpoint until I reached the
bored Israeli soldier in the booth, took off all my “metal” and passed
through, green West Bank ID and Israeli permit in hand.
Cut to last night and I was in the car again, with my father this time
at the Qalandiya checkpoint. I know this checkpoint like the back of my
hand, bane of my existence that it might be. Anyway, as we approached
the Israeli soldiers, my heart dropped. The female soldier on our lane
had the look of a hard criminal – cold, stony, hateful. I knew we were
in for a little wait. After my father handed her his US passport (with
the word “Palestine” typed in the slot for “place of birth”) she began
her interrogation of me. Where is your ID? Whose children are these?
Where are their birth certificates? Open the trunk. Not once did she
look me in the eye until she gave me the look of death when she realized
she could do nothing more to stop me from passing. “Those are the
rules” aren’t they? But when my father decided to give her a piece of
his mind, asking her what kind of system would question a child, she
glared at him and said one line. “If you don’t like it, don’t come to
Israel.”
That’s the bottom line isn’t it? Israel’s system of checkpoints is not
about the security of Israel as much as it is about solidifying its
military occupation for one, and heightening the misery of the occupied
people secondly. They are there to remind us, day in and day out that
Israel’s occupation is alive, in control and wielding its ultimate power
over our lives. If this were not the case, why then would a 10-year old
child have to show her birth certificate just in order to get home? Why
would men and women have to take off shoes, belts, watches, hairbands
and anything else that “beeps” before going through a metal detector
even when the soldiers know that these things are hardly threatening.
“It’s your wedding band,” one soldier insisted when I beeped back and
forth for the 10th time trying to get across Qalandiya. At first I tried
to argue that gold does not “beep” but after her insistence I decided
to go for the challenge. “So if it’s my wedding band, why did you make
me take it off?” insinuating that this had nothing to do with Israel’s
so-called security. “We have to do this, you know why,” she answered.
When I played dumb, said no I didn’t actually understand these
ridiculous measures she just replied, “Well, maybe you should go and
find out.”
I don’t need to “find out.” Israel does not want Palestinians in
Jerusalem, it is a plain as day. To that end, it cuts people out in one
way or the other. We are the lucky ones, only slightly inconvenienced at
checkpoints. Others have their IDs revoked, their homes demolished,
their land confiscated and their sons and daughters imprisoned, all
towards the same goal of emptying Jerusalem of its Palestinian
residents. Making me (or others) get down and walk through a checkpoint
is not about security, it is about making our lives that much more
difficult so we might think twice about making Jerusalem our permanent
home. And hopefully, according to the stone-faced soldier at Qalandiya,
if we get fed up enough, we take her advice. “Don’t come back to
Israel,” she told us. Little does she know that it will take more than
that to deter us. We are not in Israel, I wanted to tell her. We are in
Palestine; we are home.
Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information
Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global
Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at mid@miftah.org.
