Sunday of this week was a freezing cold day in the northern West Bank. A vicious dry wind relentlessly lashed the faces of everyone who ventured outside. Hunched against the wind, a group of men sat on the muddy ground, at the edges of Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus. They had been there for hours. Delayed. They wanted to go home to Beita, to work in Nablus, to a physician in Rafidiya, to a teacher in Balata - what difference did it make? After all, they didn't dream of entering Israel. One of them hid the palms of his hands. They were totally blue. He was ashamed. Not dressed appropriately, lacking protection for their heads, unspeakably humiliated, the men sat there, like a small herd of animals that had been left by the side of a large puddle until their masters deigned to fetch them. Let them wait. Students and teachers, old and young, together on the ground. There's no rush. Not even the rush of the wind. An hour, two hours, four hours. What's the difference? It's their time, not our time. Their ID cards are in the hands of the soldiers, and so is their immediate future: Will they be allowed to pass or not?
The soldiers check. What are they checking? With whom are they checking? No matter: they're checking. They're checking with the Shin Bet, the security service. "The Shin Bet is busy," says one of the soldiers at another checkpoint, this one at Beit Iva, in reply to a question about why a person with a kidney ailment has been waiting there for six hours in the cold. What's the hurry? The jailers don't even glance at their prisoners. None of the soldiers asks himself by what right he throws elderly people onto the slag by the side of the checkpoint, to wait there like animals. And if they were their own parents? The soldiers are busy, "doing their job." Classifying, separating, allowing, forbidding, asking things that are none of their business. Checking whether the boy is really sick, examining the x-ray of the aged woman, the size of the pregnant woman's belly.
In the meantime, other people have gone through the checkpoint, the fortunate ones. They have learned to stand in a row, ramrod straight, like soldiers on parade at the conclusion of an army course. They know that if the straight line of the column starts to fall apart, even for an instant, the soldier will stop letting people through. Obedient, submissive, subjugated, properly trained, they stood there and waited, each holding his orange or green ID card, grasping it tightly - it's the source of all life - his goods in his hands, tense with expectancy, uncertain whether he will be allowed through. A few of them also hold a pile of tattered notes - a doctor's letter, an old authorization from an employer. They may not help, but they can't hurt.
This is their daily routine: from home to work, to school, to the clinic, via this daily humiliation. From checkpoint to checkpoint, kilometers on foot, no matter what the weather, no matter what their age, no matter what their state of health. The lame and the halt, the blind and the crippled, the children and the aged, the women in labor and the toddlers, the educated and the ignorant, the rich and the poor - all of them in this march of the living, from checkpoint to checkpoint, from humiliation to humiliation, caged in their own land.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=5060
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
