Border
Crossing Blues
By Raphael
Cohen
17 June 2003
For a Palestinian to have
the audicity to wish to leave or enter the Gaza Strip requires the permission
of the Israeli Occupation. Assuming the right permit can be acquired,
Palestinians are still at the mercy of the officials at the Rafah crossing,
liable to be detained by the Shin Bet and subject to the frequent Israeli
closure of the border (more than 160 days so far during the Intifada).
Rafah Crossing Point is the only exit for 1.3 million Gazans to the
outside world. The Israeli Occupation forces have this week demolished
the infrastructure of the Palestinian Liason at the border, an indication
of the extent to which Palestinian authority is nothing but a word game.
Foreigners too are now also experiencing great difficulties getting
into the Gaza strip while Israel maintains they represent a security
threat.
The Egyptian side of the
border at Rafah is open 24 hours a day: the Israeli side for about six
hours, on a good day. For the twenty or so Palestinians with whom I
queued, the even shorter hours on Saturdays, the Jewish sabbath, meant
we were unable to get on the bus despite waiting from 12:30 pm and watching
those in front pile themselves and their bags on to the coveted bus.
At 2:00 pm Egyptian officials told us to head back inside the departure
hall. The general mood was disappointment and quiet resignation at having
to try again. The distance between the final Egyptian checkpoint and
the Israeli vehicle barriers is no more than 20 metres, but for Palestinans
and foreigners trying to enter or leave the Gaza strip it might as well
be 1000 miles.
Frequent closures and failures
to 'catch the bus' mean that the Egyptian authorities are used to dealing
with people stuck at the border. At the moment several hundred are waiting
to cross asa aresult of the current lengthy closure imposed by the Israelis
to mark implementation of the Road Map.. To those who do not have relatives
in Rafah or El-Areesh, this means sleeping in the departure lounge,
or if lucky on the floor of the attached mosque. For once the travellers
passport is stamped with an Egyptian departure stamp, it is not possible
to leave the hall without cancelling the journey, a measure few seemed
willing or able to do. This step certainly provoked the interest of
Egyptian security and customs officials. Although in the case of missing
the bus, little more needed to be said. The advice for foreigners (non-Egyptian
and non-Palestinian) was to take the Palestinian bus on its return journey
from Egypt, rather than the Egyptian bus, as a way of avoiding missing
the bus again.
The mood back in Egypt outside
the border complex was less resigned. Three Palestinian women from Gaza
who had been turned back that day for having too much luggage (the Israelis
randomly enforce their limit of 60 kg per person) expressed their hostility
towards the Israelis for making a simple journey so complicated. Nor
did they stint their curses on the local taxi driver who had kept them
waiting and overcharged them. They were joined by a fourth Gazan matron,
who had crossed that day. To their complaints she added her own: the
excessive Egyptian customs duty on her six niqabs. Apart from touting
taxi drivers, the vacinity around the border is a den of money changers
and fast food vendors. Improptu garment sales are held for excess clothes,
while cigarette smugglers try to persuade you to take a suitcase full
of Cleopatras (Gaza's cheapest brand) across for them. (The legendary
tunnels linking the two halves of Rafah city, so often cited by the
Israeli military to justify their destruction of civilian homes, are
far more likely used for smuggling tobacco than weapons - as if you
could get a tank, let alone a helicopter gunship through a clandestine
shaft).
The following day I returned
to the border at 8:00 am. Passing through the Egyptian controls proved
no problem as my face had become familiar to the uniformed bureaucrats.
I exchanged nods and smiles with travellers I recognized from the previous
day. Most had stayed at the border and would have set off on the first
bus. Optimism prevailed: the day was young, the border was open. Once
through the controls, the queuing continued for the bus outside. The
three Gazans from the previous day were just in front of me and they
asked me to take a bag for them to minimise their being overweight again.
I declined, given my own uncertainties about being allowed in. The Rafah
crossing was opened to Palestinians under the 1994 Cairo Agreement as
part of the Oslo process. Prior to that, leaving Gaza for Egypt meant
entering Israel and taking a boat from Isdud (Ashdod). Up to 1500 people
per day were making the crossing before the Intifada began; now they
number about 250. The Egyptian complex is under construction and promises
to be a quite impressive replica of the Karnak Termple when completed.
For the time being, the unfinished halls provide needed shade for the
waiting departees, while they themselves wait for the political changes
to justify such grand architecture.
Fifty or so people, including
ten children, managed to cram themselves and their luggage on to the
bus which set off for the final Egyptian control and fence. The bus
stopped and parked so as to allow the near continuous stream of double
lorries to continue delivering their loads of cement and gravel unhindered
(where is all this building material destined for?). Each was subject
to a brief underbody search using a mirror at the Israeli barrier, about
20 metres away. Suddenly a man in a sharp suit ran up to the bus accompanied
by Egyptian officials. This previliged latecomer proceeded to hand out
brand new, late model mobile phones to anyone who was willing to take
one (25NIS, about $5 was the recompense). After 30 minutes waiting it
became clear there was some problem. Discussion centred around three
causes: the overcrowding on the bus, the activities of the phone man
and the presence of a foreigner, me. As every lorry rolled by, as the
Palestinian bus crossed and recrossed, as the heat mounted, as the crying
of children loudened people waited stoically, muttering the occasional
curse on both houses.
Finally after more than two
hours on the bus, the signal came to move. This required all those standing
in the aisle (about 15 people) to move to the back of the bus and crouch
down on the floor to avoid arousing Israeli suspicions of overcrowding.
Once through the barrier everybody helped their neighbour get up and
breathed a sigh of relief. The short journey over, now came the difficult
part: convincing the Israelis to let you into Gaza. For Palestinians
this meant being separated from their luggage after a preliminary glance
at passports and passes by apparently Palestinian staff (since 7 July
2001, only eight Palestinian workers and three drivers have been allowed
to work at the checkpoint). If all looked in order one proceeded inside
the arrival hall and passed through a metal detector. The Israeli woman
clerk summoning people through had failed to internalize the stipulation
of the Cairo Agreement that "the two sides are determined to do
their utmost to maintain the dignity of persons passing through the
border crossings". Her incessant mantra of, "jawwal, sa'ah,
mafatih" (mobile, watch, keys), and admonishing "Ya Ustaaz"
(mister) or "Ya Hajja" (madam) as she asked men and women
to remove their shoes and belts were delivered with undisguised contempt.
Her Arabic skills clearly did not include words for please or thank
you. That ordeal over, Palestinians handed over their passports to clerks
(again Palestinian) who handed them over to the Israelis sitting behind
smoked glass behind them where they would be looked up on computers.
Rafah crossing is a favourite point to detain incoming Palestinians
on "security grounds". Gradually the crosser shuffled from
one block of plastic seats, blue or orange as if according to some secret
code, to another as the outside beckoned. The odd individual was escorted
away by security officials (recognisable from their trekker style boots)
for a chat. If all went well with the two passport and pass controls
and your luggage was not overweight and satisfactory you were free to
leave. Al-hamdulillah.
That day three people were
sent back by the Israelis; two of them were foreign. The first was an
American Palestinian with two children trying to join her husband in
Gaza. She did not have Palestinian papers and was denied entry simply
because she was American. She was sitting in the Egyptian departure
hall when I returned. The other, myself, was British. I rejected the
offer of the Shin Bet to prove to them I was not a security risk (that
is by informing on all my contacts in Gaza) and chose to return to Egypt.
This proved an involved process, as by the time the ISA has decided
to release me it was getting dark and there was no transport across
the border. I waited for some three hours on the border road between
the two sides in the hands of the Israeli liason watching the jeeps,
apcs and tanks I had become familiar with in Rafah heading in and out
of their base. The distant sound of shooting could be heard periodically,
and I wondered if my friends' houses on the border were being targetted
again. Eventually I was walked across to the Egyptian side and handed
over to to the Egyptian liason to the accompaniment of Israeli sirens
sounding for a military exercise. I was warned this would happen and
that it was only a simulation. Nevertheless the wailing could not drown
out the sound of Israeli gunfire from Rafah. In a way I wished the Egyptians
would have refused to admit me and I would be left forever to shuttle
between the two fences until the world came to its senses.