Three
Hours At Kalandia Checkpoint
By Neta Golan
writing from Kalandia checkpoint
15 October 2004
Electronic Intifada
The
difference between Kalandia Checkpoint at the entrance of Ramallah and
Hawara Checkpoint at Nablus's main exit and entry is that there are
people who can actually go in and out through Kalandia.
Nablus, like most
of the major West Bank cities, has been under intense siege for the
last four years. Recently, people over thirty five from Nablus are allowed
out sometimes and occasionally students are allowed in and out -- once
each way each week. Otherwise, if you are from Nablus, you can not leave
or enter.
I remember pleading
with the soldiers to allow the very pregnant wife of my friend to return
to her husband and children in Hawara, the village whose land the checkpoint
is built on. She had her marriage certificate with her proving that
her husband was from Hawara but her I.D. said Nablus so after standing
in the sun for almost two hours she was screamed at to turn back. I
told the soldier that I hope his mother will never be treated the way
he treated this woman and he answered smugly, "She won't. She is
not Palestinian".
Ramallah, on the
other hand, has special circumstances. After 1967, when Israel unilaterally
annexed what they call "East Jerusalem" as part of Israel,
they did not want to make citizens of the Palestinians that lived there.
So they granted the native inhabitants of Jerusalem the status of "permanent
residents of Jerusalem" -- a status similar to one a foreigner
who was granted permission to live in Israel. They don't have the right
to vote in the national elections and if Jerusalem stops being "the
center of their life" -- if they move to the neighboring city or
go to study abroad -- their residency is revoked and they lose their
right to live in Jerusalem -- or any where else in Israel-Palestine
for that matter.
As part of the effort
to Judaize Jerusalem (a term used by the Israeli Authorities), Palestinians
from East Jerusalem are not given permits to build or even repair their
homes in the city. If they built without a permit their houses are demolished.
On the other hand they are permitted to build in areas closer to Ramallah
like Al-Ram and Samir Amis. These areas are considered by Israel as
part of "Greater Jerusalem" so the Jerusalemites that live
there pay taxes to the Jerusalem municipality (and receive bullets instead
of services). In return -- for leaving Jerusalem -- they do not lose
their residency rights and are allowed through the checkpoints between
Jerusalem and Ramallah. The result is that the strangling siege that
other cities are subjected to is not complete and Ramallah's economy
has been able to survive.
When my family moved
back to Ramallah, I felt like the Jew that was told by his rabbi to
take a goat into his over-crowded house after he complained about it
being unbearable. A month later when he was allowed to put the goat
back in its pen his house didn't seem that bad. So when my family and
I first moved back from Nablus to Ramallah, I almost loved Kalandia
checkpoint.
Unfortunately the
novelty of being allowed to cross soon wore off and soon I was dreading
having to cross Kalandia.
Today I was dreading
having to witness the humiliation of people. I was dreading the frightened
children, the crying babies, the old and infirm forced to wait while
being bossed around by armed men the age of their sons or their grandchildren.
"Stand, wait,
walk..." I was dreading having to witness people being threatened
or beaten by the Israeli soldiers. I was dreading not being able to
intervene physically because my baby daughter Shaden was coming with
me. I was dreading the helplessness and the rage that comes with crossing
Kalandia checkpoint. But, It was the first training of the olive harvest
campaign and I wanted to be there. So I took my daughter Shaden and
a very deep breath, and called a cab.
After the soldiers'
usual surprise at seeing an Israeli Jew come walking out of Ramallah
and the usual scolding of "It's illegal for you to be there",
I gave my routine explanation. I told him I was married to a Palestinian
and lived in area "C" beyond the checkpoint. An Apartheid
military order was issued in October 2000 that stated that Israeli citizens
were forbidden to enter area "A". The allegedly "Palestinian
controlled" areas.
After he communicated
my details over the wireless I was told to wait. This was not unusual.
I was used to this
routine by now, The commander of the checkpoint, a large freckled boy,
called me over to him. "Aren't you afraid to go in there? "he
asked. "I don't need to be afraid. I don't have a gun." I
explained "I am not there as an occupier so I am not treated as
one." He asked: "Do you see me here with a flag?"
"No. I see
you here with a gun," I replied.
Apparently he didn't
like my answers because then he ordered me: "Don't stand close
to me. Go stand over there and stop disturbing my work".
After half an hour
of waiting to be cleared to proceed I asked what was going on. I was
told by a chubby young soldier that I was wanted by the police and that
they should be arriving shortly. After another hour in which I tried
to intervene, as soldiers used unnecessary violence in two separate
incidents, I asked him again if the police could be told to hurry since
I had a baby with me, He hinted that it was the Shabak -- the Israeli
secret service -- that wanted me and said that the issue was out of
his hands. That worried me.
I have been summoned
to interrogation with the secret service around three years ago. The
summons had arrived in the mail asking me to report to a certain police
station for a clarification. Only after I entered the office was I told
by the interrogator that he was from the "Shabak".
I asked my interrogator
if he had ever, while working with Palestinians, applied "moderate
physical pressure" -- the technical term used for torture by the
Israeli authorities. He yelled that that didn't exist. "Moderate
physical pressure" was official procedure in interrogating Palestinians
until 1999 after which it became unofficial procedure.
Now, I wondered
why they needed me to wait at the checkpoint. Will they take me now?
What about Shaden? I didn't have enough diapers or warm clothes for
her for a long stay out. What about my eldest daughter Nawal who is
a year and seven months old now and would be home from day care soon?
My fears were fueled by the fact that Tali Fahima, an Israeli woman
who had spent time building bridges in Jenin refugee camp, had been
recently accused by the Shabak of aiding terrorism. They held her for
thirty days which is as long as the law permits to hold an Israeli without
filing charges, and interrogated her fifteen hours a day.
When the legal time
they could hold her was up the Shabak had nothing to charge her with.
So she was sentenced for a renewable sentence of four months of administrative
detention. The criminalization of Israeli peace activists is not surprising,
actually it is inevitable. No society can indefinitely uphold a set
of double standards. Treating Palestinians as subhumans who aren't entitled
to basic rights while maintaining a democracy for Jews is not sustainable
or even possible.
After two hours
Shaden was getting cold and beginning to sneeze, I considered leaving
my I.D. with the soldiers and just walking away. Would they chase me?
After three hours
of being forced to witness the hell of Kalandia, a police car from the
neighboring settlement of Neve Yaakov appeared with a summons like the
one I had received in the mail three years ago. I was being asked to
come in for "a clarification" on the nineteenth Of October.
"Couldn't you
have sent this to me the mail?" I asked the policeman that gave
me the summons. I was close to tears by this time.
"They wanted
you to get it by hand" He said.
"And it took
you three hours to get here?"
"You can file
a complaint." he answered. The freckled checkpoint commander reappeared.
He called me "cheeky" for complaining and again repeated what
seemed to be a favorite of his. He came up close to me and ordered "Don't
stand so close to me. You're disturbing my work."
I guess he was right.
In a land where women give birth at the side of the road and patients
die "waiting" by these checkpoints while thousands -- whose
only crime is to fight for their freedom -- are spending there lives
in prison camps, it is cheeky to complain about three hours.
Neta Golan is an Israeli peace activist.