Bethlehem: Attendance at Checkpoint 300
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My name is Enid Gordon. I am a Methodist Minister at present on sabbatical working for Quaker Peace and Social Witness as an Ecumenical Accompanier serving on the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine/Israel (EAPPI). The views contained in this e-mail are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Methodist Church, QPSW or the WCC. If you would like to distribute further, publish the information contained here, or to place it on a website please first contact the QPSW Middle East Programme Manager, Floresca Karanasou (florescak@quaker.org.uk) for permission. Thank you.
I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I should begin with what dominates much of my time here in Bethlehem, attendance at Checkpoint 300.
My alarm goes off at five minutes to four and I wash and dress and pant as I hurriedly climb the steep hill that leads to the checkpoint. At 4.30am already between 500 and 800 men have assembled, some arriving as early as 1am in order to gain a place at the front of the queue. Vendors line the road selling bread, humus, coffee and tea. Bright security lights shine from above the wall, which stands nearly nine metres high. Parallel to the wall are two high rows of iron railings forming an 80 metre long corridor which feels and looks like a cage. Here the men wait and smoke and try to keep warm in the bitter cold night air. The early ones sit on the concrete, lean against the railings and try to sleep, others kneel in prayer on flattened cardboard boxes, the black plastic bag containing their packed lunch placed on the ground by their side. The checkpoint is due to open at 5am but it often takes at least one phone call to the humanitarian hotline in order to get them to get the soldier to open at the agreed time, by which time it is usually 5.15am.
The
corridor/cage holds two people side by side if they are not too fat,
and very few people here are fat. But the men (and it is mainly men)
are so anxious to pass through the checkpoint so they won’t be late
for work that they squash in as tightly as is humanly possible in
order to pass through at the earliest possible moment. This is
particularly distressing for the few women who are forced through
circumstance to venture out at this time in the morning, because
their culture prohibits close contact with men. EAPPI have
repeatedly requested a separate corridor for women, children, the
elderly and those who are sick or whose mobility is impaired. But
the general and repeated answer from the soldiers on the ground is,
“That is their problem. It is not my problem.”
One member of the EAPPI team stands outside the corridor/cage, near the bullet-proof glass booth in which the soldier sits. One of our jobs is to count the number of people waiting at 4.45 and then count the people as they pass one at a time through the narrow turnstile. One morning we counted about 2,500 people but numbers vary. If people going through the turnstile are holding children or bags or parcels or cases this can be quite a struggle, as the turnstile was only made to hold one thin person.
My chosen role is to accompany people as they wait and queue in order to pass through to the next holding bay to observe what happens there, as this is where most trouble arises. And so we wait. Last Tuesday we waited so crushed together in the corridor/cage that one man fainted and the mood became angry. I, and those standing near me waited for two hours and twenty-five minutes before we reached the first turnstile and the light turned green and we could show our passport in my case and identity card and permit in theirs. One elderly woman by this time was so tired that she could hardly move. Two men who had gone through all the screening to get permits to enable them to work in Jerusalem were turned back. Their identity cards and permits were in date and in order. They were travelling at the permitted time. But they were not going to work. They were each carrying had a child who was sick and had a hospital appointment in Jerusalem. Children don’t need permits. A written appointment will suffice. But the men only had permits to go to work, not to take children to hospital. It would mean another day off work to stand in another long queue to get a permit to allow them to visit the hospital. But first they’d need to wait for another hospital appointment.
The rest of us having negotiated the turnstile and had our papers checked by the soldier in the booth, we run, if we are able, through a courtyard with guard dogs running towards us and barking at us as we enter another wider corridor and wait in another queue in order to enter the holding bay which contains more barriers which force us to choose between two long queues leading to metal detectors. This area looks and feels like an airport terminal except that there are security guards with guns at the ready standing on platforms above us shouting in Hebrew through loudspeakers that distort the voice. Here two young men were trying to stay sane by joking with each other. They were sent out to join the end of the first queue for laughing.
The longest I’ve waited in the queue waiting to go through the turnstile into the metal detector bay is twenty-five minutes, but some people claim to have waited longer. Here people are forced to take off their shoes, jackets, watches and belts and put them in plastic trays along with any bags or parcels they happen to be carrying. If the metal detector beeps you have to remove something else until you can pass without it beeping. People needing crutches or walking frames have real problems here because people have to go through the system one by one so there is no one to help once the crutch or frame is on the conveyor belt to be checked. The people behind just have to wait until the solders are convinced that the person needing aids to walk is not a security risk, and the soldiers do this at a distance from inside their bullet proof booths, again screaming through load-speakers. Once through this section the aim is to quickly grab all your things and run, if you are able, through another corridor to join the final queue. It is waiting in this queue that most people put on their shoes, belts jackets and watches.
In the final holding bay the queues are usually shorter because there are twelve booths to choose from but I’ve only seen five working. Here identity cards and permits are checked in more detail and then fingerprints are checked. In the two hours I stand and observe in this section on average six people are sent home, usually without being told why. One morning a 12 year old boy, his nine year old brother, his sisters aged 8 and 7 and his six year old brother were all sent back home at the final booth after waiting patiently as good as gold in order to pass to go to school because the soldier considered the youngest boy to be too young to be of school age. Another morning a man failed the fingerprint test because he had a bandage on his finger. Another morning a man failed the fingerprint test before he had even put his hand in the required place. He pleaded and pleaded to be allowed to take the test again but the soldier refused and told him to go back home. It took two hours of my phoning various help lines before a senior officer was sent to the booth to see that the man was given a chance to have his fingerprint checked. The computer said he was OK so finally he was allowed to go to work. All the getting up early, climbing the steep hill, standing in the cold being crushed on all sides by smoking men had been worthwhile.
Imagine having to do this every single morning simply to get to work or school. Yet the people generally remain calm and polite and friendly. They cannot understand why the world stands by and lets them be treated like this when their only ‘sin’ is to be born in the same town as Jesus. But these people are the lucky ones. They have been cleared by security police as being of no threat to Israel. They have low paid jobs, mainly in the construction industry. One of the biggest problems for people in Bethlehem is unemployment. The wall has strangled the town’s economy and taken 87% of its land. Even exports of communion wine have been banned for security reasons.
Not all the checkpoints are like checkpoint 300. I’m told that some are even worse. I went with my colleagues to the checkpoint near the village of An Nu’man. Since 1967 Israel has claimed that this village is part of Jerusalem not the West Bank but the people are not allowed Jerusalem IDs only West Bank IDs so they are technically living illegally in their own homes. If they leave the village without the correct papers they may never be allowed back home. If they marry anyone outside the village that person will not be allowed to live in the village, only those born there.
We escorted children coming home from their school in the neighbouring village of Al Khas. They are forced to go through the checkpoint twice a day and are frequently harassed by soldiers there. I started chatting as best I could with my limited Arabic to two boys aged 16 and 10 who needed to get through the checkpoint to collect some sheep from a neighbouring village. They were denied permission to cross. I spoke to the soldier, escorted the boys through the checkpoint, waited while the sheep were delivered then escorted the boys back through the checkpoint together with the sheep. Fortunately the soldier did not insist that the sheep go through the metal detector only the humans.
I’ll leave you with some quotes from people who have spoken to me inside checkpoint 300. Different security guards on five occasions shouted, “What are you doing here? Go home.” But the response from the Palestinian people is quite different. “When you are here there is no problem, when you are not there is.” “Welcome, welcome, you are most welcome. Thank you for being here. Tell the world how we are treated. Get them to do something to help us.”
Please pray for the people in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories. Pray for the Palestinians that they may not turn to violence as a way to get justice for their people. Pray also for the Israeli Soldiers who have only been trained to deal with enemies and do not know how to behave towards people who refuse to be their enemies. And pray for the people working to bring peace in the land that once was called holy.
