The scene: a military checkpoint deep in Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
A tall, thin elderly man, walking stick in hand, makes a detour past the line of
Palestinians, many of them young men, waiting obediently behind concrete
barriers for permission from an Israeli soldier to leave one Palestinian area,
the city of Nablus, to enter another Palestinian area, the neighbouring village
of Huwara. The long queue is moving slowly, the soldier taking his time to check
each person's papers.
The old man heads off purposefully down a parallel but empty lane reserved for
vehicle inspections. A young soldier controlling the human traffic spots him and
orders him back in line. The old man stops, fixes the soldier with a stare and
refuses. The soldier looks startled, and uncomfortable at the unexpected show of
defiance. He tells the old man more gently to go back to the queue. The old man
stands his ground. After a few tense moments, the soldier relents and the old
man passes.
Is the confrontation revealing of the soldier's humanity? That is not the way it
looks -- or feels -- to the young Palestinians penned in behind the concrete
barriers. They can only watch the scene in silence. None would dare to address
the soldier in the manner the old man did -- or take his side had the Israeli
been of a different disposition. An old man is unlikely to be detained or beaten
at a checkpoint. Who, after all, would believe he attacked or threatened a
soldier, or resisted arrest, or was carrying a weapon? But the young men know
their own injuries or arrests would barely merit a line in Israel's newspapers,
let alone an investigation.
And so, the checkpoints have made potential warriors of Palestine's grandfathers
at the price of emasculating their sons and grandsons.
I observed this small indignity -- such humiliations are now a staple of life
for any Palestinian who needs to move around the West Bank -- during a shift
with Machsom Watch. The grass-roots organisation founded by Israeli women in
2001 monitors the behaviour of soldiers at a few dozen of the more accessible
checkpoints ("machsom' in Hebrew).
The checkpoints came to dominate Palestinian life in the West Bank (and, before
the disengagement, in Gaza too) long before the outbreak of the second intifada
in late 2000, and even before the first Palestinian suicide bombings. They were
Israel's response to the Oslo accords, which created a Palestinian Authority to
govern limited areas of the occupied territories. Israel began restricting
Palestinians allowed to work in Israel to those issued with exit permits -- a
system enforced through a growing network of military roadblocks. Soon the
checkpoints were also limiting movement inside the occupied territories,
ostensibly to protect the Jewish settlements built in occupied territory.
By late last year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs, 528 checkpoints and roadblocks had been recorded in the
West Bank, choking its roads every few miles. Israel's daily Haaretz newspaper
puts the figure even higher: in January there were 75 permanently manned
checkpoints, some 150 mobile checkpoints, and more than 400 places where roads
have been blocked by obstacles. All these restrictions on movement for a place
that is, according to the CIA's World Factbook, no larger than the small US
state of Colorado.
As a result, moving goods and people from one place to the next in the West Bank
has become a nightmare of logistics and costly delays. At the checkpoints, food
spoils, patients die, and children are prevented from reaching their schools.
The World Bank blames the checkpoints and roadblocks for strangling the
Palestinian economy.
Embarrassed by recent publicity about the burgeoning number of checkpoints, the
Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, promised the Palestinian president, Mahmoud
Abbas, in December that there would be an easing of travel restrictions in the
West Bank -- to little effect, according to reports in the Israeli media.
Although the army announced last month that 44 earth barriers had been removed
in fulfilment of Olmert's pledge, it later emerged that none of the roadblocks
had actually been there in the first place.
Contrary to the impression of most observers, the great majority of the
checkpoints are not even near the Green Line, Israel's internationally
recognised border until it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Some are so
deep inside Palestinian territory that the army refuses to allow Machsom Watch
to visit them. There, the women say, no one knows what abuses are being
perpetrated unseen on Palestinians.
But at Huwara checkpoint, where the old man refused to submit, the soldiers know
that most of the time they are being watched by fellow Israelis and that their
behaviour is being recorded in monthly logs. Machsom Watch has a history of
publishing embarrassing photographs and videos of the soldiers' actions. It
showed, for example, a videotape in 2004 of a young Palestinian man being forced
to play his violin at Beit Iba checkpoint, a story that gained worldwide
attention because it echoed the indignities suffered by Jews at the hands of the
Nazis.
Machsom Watch has about 500 members, reportedly inlcuding Olmert's leftwing
daughter, Dana. But only about 200 actively take part in checkpoint duties, an
experience that has left many outspoken in denouncing the occupation. The
organisation is widely seen by the Israeli public as extremist, with pro-Israel
groups accusing the women of "demonising' Israel.
It is the kind of criticism painfully familiar to Nomi Lalo, from Kfar Sava. A
veteran of Machsom Watch, she is the mother of three children, two of whom have
already served in the army while the youngest, aged 17, is due to join up later
this year. "He has been more exposed to my experiences in Machsom Watch and has
some sympathy with my point of view,' she says. "But my oldest son has been very
hostile about my activities. It has caused a lot of tension in the family.'
Most of the women do shifts at a single checkpoint, but I join Nomi on "mobile'
duty in the central region, moving between the dozens of checkpoints west of
Nablus.
She wants to start by showing me the separate road system in the West Bank, with
unrestricted and high-quality roads set aside for Jewish settlers living
illegally in occupied territory while Palestinians are forced to make difficult
and lengthy journeys over hills and through valleys on what are often little
more than dirt tracks.
Machsom Watch calls this "apartheid', a judgment shared by the liberal daily
Haaretz newspaper, which recently wrote an editorial that Israeli parents ought
to "be very worried about their country sending their sons and daughters on an
apartheid mission: to restrict Palestinian mobility within the occupied
territory in order to enable Jews to move freely.'
We leave the small Palestinian town of Azzoun, close by the city of Qalqilya,
and head directly north towards another city, Tulkarm. A trip that should take
little more than a quarter of an hour is now all but impossible for most
Palestinians.
"This road is virtually empty, even though it is the main route between two of
the West Bank's largest cities,' Nomi points out. "That is because most
Palestinians cannot get the permits they need to use these roads. Without a
permit they can't get through the checkpoints, so either they stay in their
villages or they have to seek circuitous and dangerous routes off the main
roads.'
We soon reach one of the checkpoints Nomi is talking about. At Aras, two
soldiers sit in a small concrete bunker in the centre of the main junction
between Tulkarm and Nablus. The bored soldiers are killing time waiting for the
next car and the driver whose papers they will need to inspect.
A young Palestinian man, in woollen cap to protect him from the cold, stands by
a telegraph post close by the junction. Bilal, aged 26, has been "detained' at
the same spot for three hours by the soldiers. Nervously he tells us that he is
trying to reach his ill father in hospital in Tulkarm. Nomi looks unconvinced
and, after a talk with the soldiers and calls on her mobile phone to their
commanders, she has a clearer picture.
"He has been working illegally in Israel and they have caught him trying to get
back to his home in the West Bank. The soldiers are holding him here to punish
him. They could imprison him but, given the dire state of the Palestinian
economy, the Israeli prisons would soon be overflowing with jobseekers. So
holding him here all day is a way of making him suffer. It's illegal but, unless
someone from Machsom Watch turns up, who will ever know?'
Is it not good that the military commanders are willing to talk to her? "They
know we can present their activities in the West Bank in a very harsh light and
so they cooperate. They don't want bad publicity. I never forget that when I am
speaking to them. When they are being helpful, I remind myself their primary
motive is to protect the occupation's image.'
Nomi sees proof in cases like Bilal's that the checkpoints and Israel's steel
and concrete barrier in the West Bank -- or fence, as she calls it -- are not
working in the way Israel claims. "First, the fence is built on Palestinian
land, not on the Green Line, and it cuts Palestinians off from their farmland
and their chances of employment. It forces them to try to get into Israel to
work. It is self-defeating.
"And second, thousands of Palestinians like Bilal reach Israel from the West
Bank each day in search of work. Any one of them could be a suicide bomber. The
fence simply isn't effective in terms of stopping them. If Palestinians who are
determined enough to work in Israel can avoid the checkpoints, those who want to
attack Israel can certainly avoid them. No one straps a bomb on and marches up
to a checkpoint. It is ordinary Palestinians who suffer instead.'
The other day, says Nomi, she found a professor of English from Bir Zeit
University held at this checkpoint, just like Bilal. He had tried to sneak out
of Tulkarm during a curfew to teach a class at the university near the city of
Ramallah, some 40km south of here. Nomi's intervention eventually got him
released. "He was sent back to Tulkarm. He thanked me profusely, but really what
did we do for him or his students? We certainly didn't get him to the
university.'
After Nomi's round of calls, Bilal is called over by one of the soldiers.
Wagging his finger reprovingly, the soldier lectures Bilal for several minutes
before sending him on his way with a dismissive wave of the hand. Another small
indignity.
As we leave, Nomi receives a call from a Machsom Watch group at Jitt checkpoint,
a few miles away. The team of women say that, when they turned up to begin their
shift, the soldiers punished the Palestinians by shutting the checkpoint. The
women are panicking because a tailback of cars -- mainly taxis and trucks driven
by Palestinians with special permits -- is building. After some discussion with
Nomi, it is decided that the women should leave.
We head uphill to another checkpoint, some 500 metres from Aras, guarding the
entrance to Jabara, a village whose educated population include many teachers
and school inspectors. Nowadays, however, the villagers are among several
thousand Palestinians living in a legal twilight zone, trapped on the Israeli
side of the wall. Cut off from the rest of the West Bank, the villagers are not
allowed to receive guests and need special permits to reach the schools where
they work. (An additional quarter of a million Palestinians are sealed off from
both Israel and the West Bank in their own ghettoes.)
"Children who have married out of Jabara are not even allowed to visit their
parents here,' says Nomi. "Family life has been torn apart, with people unable
to attend funerals and weddings. I cannot imagine what it is like for them. The
Supreme Court has demanded the fence be moved but the state says it does not
have the money for the time being to make the changes.'
Jabara's children have a checkpoint named after them which they have to pass
through each day to reach their schools nearby in the West Bank.
At the far end of Jabara we have to pass through a locked gate to leave the
village. There we are greeted by yet another checkpoint, this one closer to the
Green Line on a road the settlers use to reach Israel. It is one of a growing
number that look suspiciously like border crossings, even though they are not on
the Green Line, with special booths and lanes for the soldiers to inspect
vehicles.
The soldiers see our yellow number plate, distinguishing us from the green
plates of the Palestinians, and wave us through. Nomi is using a settlers' map
she bought from a petrol station inside Israel to navigate our way to the next
checkpoint, Anabta, close by an isolated Jewish settlement called Enav.
Although this was once a busy main road, the checkpoint is empty and the
soldiers mill around with nothing to do. An old Palestinian man wearing the
black and white keffiyah (head scarf) popularised by Yasser Arafat approaches
them selling socks. There are no detained Palestinians, so we move on.
Nomi is as sceptical of claims she hears in the Israeli media about the
checkpoints foiling suicide attacks as she is about the army's claims that they
have been removing the roadblocks. "I spend all day monitoring a checkpoint and
come home in the evening, turn on the TV and hear that four suicide bombers were
caught at the checkpoint where I have been working. It happens just too often. I
stopped believing the army a long time ago.'
We arrive at another settlement, comprising a couple of dozen Jewish families,
called Shavei Shomron. It is located next to Road 60, once the main route
between Nablus and the most northernly Palestinian city, Jenin. Now the road is
empty and leads nowhere; it has been blocked by the army, supposedly to protect
Shomron.
"Palestinians have to drive for hours across country to reach Jenin just because
a handful of settlers want to live here by the main road,' observes Nomi.
A short distance away, also on Road 60, is one of the larger and busier
checkpoints: Beit Iba, the site where the Palestinian was forced to play his
violin. A few kilometres west of Nablus, the checkpoint has been built in the
most unlikely of places: a working quarry that has covered everything in the
area with a fine white dust. "I look at this place and think the army at least
has a sense of humour,' Nomi says.
Yellow Palestinian taxis are waiting at one end of the quarry to pick up
Palestinians allowed to leave Nablus on foot through the checkpoint. At the
vehicle inspection point, a donkey and cart stacked so high with boxes of
medicines that they look permanently on the verge of tipping over is being
checked alongside ambulances and trucks.
Close by is the familiar corridor of metal gates, turnstiles and concrete
barriers through which Palestinians must pass one at a time to be inspected. On
a battered table, a young man is emptying the contents of his small suitcase,
presumably after a stay in Nablus. He is made to hold up his packed underwear in
front of the soldiers and the Palestinian onlookers. Another small indignity.
Here at least the Palestinians wait under a metal awning that protects from the
sun and rain. "The roof and the table are our doing,' says Nomi. "Before the
Palestinians had to empty their bags on to the ground.'
Machsom Watch is also responsible for a small Portakabin office nearby, up a
narrow flight of concrete steps, with the ostentatious sign "Humanitarian Post'
by the door. "After we complained about women with babies being made to wait for
hours in line, the army put up this cabin with baby changing facilities, diapers
and formula milk. Then they invited the media to come and film it.'
The experiment was short-lived apparently. After two weeks the army claimed the
Palestinians were not using the post and removed the facilities. I go up and
take a look. It's entirely bare: just four walls and a very dusty basin.
How effective does she feel Machsom Watch is? Does it really help the
Palestinians or merely add a veneer of legitimacy to the checkpoints by
suggesting, like the humanitarian post, that Israel cares about its occupied
subjects? It is, Nomi admits, a question that troubles her a great deal.
"It's a dilemma. The Palestinians here used to have to queue under the sun
without shelter or water. Now that we have got them a roof, maybe we have made
the occupation look a little more humane, a little more acceptable. There are
some women who argue we should only watch, and not interfere, even if we see
Palestinians being abused or beaten.'
Which happens, as Machsom Watch's monthly reports document in detail. Even the
Israeli media is starting to report uncomfortably about the soldier's behaviour,
from assaults to soldiers urinating in front of religious women.
At Beit Iba in October, says Nomi, a Palestinian youngster was badly beaten by
soldiers after he panicked in the queue and shinned up a pole shouting that he
couldn't breath. Haaretz later reported that the soldiers beat him with their
rifle butts and smashed his glasses. He was then thrown in a detention cell at
the checkpoint.
And in November, Haitem Yassin, aged 25, made the mistake of arguing with a
soldier at a small checkpoint near Beit Iba called Asira al-Shamalia. He was
upset when the soldiers forced the religious women he was sharing a taxi with to
pat their bodies as a security measure. According to Amira Hass, a veteran
Israeli reporter, Yassin was then shoved by one of the soldiers. He made the
mistake of pushing back. Yassin was shot in the stomach, handcuffed and beaten
with rifle butts while other soldiers blocked an ambulance from coming to his
aid. Yassin remained unconscious for several days.
We leave Beit Iba and within a few minutes we are at another roadblock, at Jitt.
This is where the soldiers shut the checkpoint to traffic when the Machsom Watch
team showed up earlier. Nomi wants to talk to them. We park some distance away,
behind the queue of Palestinian cars, and she walks towards them.
There is a brief discussion and she is back. Meanwhile, one of the soldiers
takes out a megaphone and calls to the taxi driver at the front of the queue. He
is told to leave his car at the wait sign and approach the checkpoint 100 metres
away on foot. "They are not happy. Now they are punishing the drivers because I
have turned up. It's exactly the same response as this morning.' Nomi decides
Machsom Watch should retreat again. We leave as the queue of cars starts to
build up.
The notorious Huwara checkpoint, guarding the main road to Nablus from the
south, is our next destination. Early in the intifada, there were regular
stories of soldiers abusing Palestinians here. Today, Machsom Watch has an
almost permanent presence here, as do army officers concerned about bad
publicity.
It is a surreal scene. We are deep in the West Bank, with Palestinians
everywhere, but two young Jews -- sporting a hippy look fashionable among the
more extreme religious settlers -- are lounging by the side of the road waiting
for a lift to take them to one of the more militant settlements that encircle
Nablus. A soldier, there to protect them, stands chatting.
"There used to be a taxi rank here waiting for Palestinians as they came through
the checkpoint,' says Nomi, "but it has been moved much further away so the
settlers have a safer pickup point. The convenience of the settlers means that
each day thousands of Palestinians, including pregnant women and the disabled,
must walk more than an extra hundred yards to reach the taxis.'
As I am photographing the checkpoint, a soldier wearing red-brown boots -- the
sign of a paratrooper, according to Nomi -- confronts me, warning that he will
confiscate my camera. Nomi knows her, and my, rights and asks him by what
authority he is making such a threat. They argue in Hebrew for a few minutes
before he apologises, saying he mistook me for a Palestinian. "Are only
Palestinians not allowed to photograph the checkpoints?' Nomi scolds him, adding
as an afterthought: "Didn't you hear that modern mobile phones have cameras? How
can you stop a checkpoint being photographed?'
The pleasant face of Huwara is Micha, an officer from the District Coordination
Office who oversees the soldiers. When he shows up in his car, Nomi engages him
in conversation. Micha tells us that yesterday a teenager was stopped at the
checkpoint carrying a knife and bomb-making equipment. Nomi scoffs, much to
Micha's annoyance.
"Why is it always teenagers being stopped at the checkpoints?' she asks him.
"You know as well as I do that the Shin Bet [Israel's domestic security service]
puts these youngsters up to it to justify the checkpoints' existence. Why would
anyone leave Nablus with a knife and bring it to Huwara checkpoint? For God's
sake, you can buy swords on the other side of the checkpoint, in Huwara
village.'
We leave Huwara and go deeper into the West Bank, along a "sterile road' -- army
parlance for one the Palestinians cannot use -- that today services settlers
reaching Elon Moreh and Itimar. Once Palestinians travelled the road to the
village of Beit Furik but not anymore. "Israel does not put up signs telling you
that two road systems exist here. Instead it is the responsibility of
Palestinians to know that they cannot drive on this road. Any that make a
mistake are arrested.'
South-east of Nablus we pass the village of Beit Furik itself, the entrance to
which has a large metal gate that can be locked by the army at will. A short
distance on and we reach Beit Furik checkpoint and beyond it, tantalisingly in
view, the grey cinderblock homes of the city of Nablus.
Again, when I try to take a photo, a soldier storms towards me barely concealing
his anger. Nomi remonstrates with him, but he is in a foul mood. Away from him,
she confides: "They know that these checkpoints violate international law and
that they are complict in war crimes. Many of the soldiers are scared of being
photographed.'
Faced with the hostile soldier, we soon abandon Beit Furik and head back to
Huwara. Less than a minute on from Huwara (Nomi makes me check my watch), we
have hit another checkpoint: Yitzhar. A snarl-up of taxis, trucks and a few
private cars is blocking the Palestinian inspection lane. We overtake the queue
in a separate lane reserved for cars with yellow plates (settlers) and reach the
other side of the checkpoint.
There we find a taxi driver waiting by the side of the road next to his yellow
cab. Faek has been there for 90 minutes after an Israeli policeman confiscated
both his ID and his driving licence, and then disappeared with them. Did Faek
get the name of the policeman? No, he replies. "Of course not,' admits Nomi.
"What Palestinian would risk asking an Israeli official for his name?'
Nomi makes more calls and is told that Faek can come to the police station in
the nearby settlement of Ariel to collect his papers. But, in truth, Faek is
trapped. He cannot get through the checkpoints separating him from Ariel without
his ID card. And even if he could find a tortuous route around the checkpoints,
he could still be arrested for not having a licence and issued a fine of a few
hundred shekels, a small sum for Israelis but one he would struggle to pay. So
quietly he carries on waiting in the hope that the policeman will return.
Nomi is not hopeful. "It is illegal to take his papers without giving him a
receipt but this kind of thing happens all the time. What can the Palestinians
do? They dare not argue. It's the Wild West out here.'
Some time later, as the sun lowers in the sky and a chill wind picks up, Faek is
still waiting. Nomi's shift is coming to an end and we must head back to Israel.
She promises to continue putting pressure by phone on the police to return his
documents. Nearly two hours later, as I arrive home, Faek unexpectedly calls,
saying he has finally got his papers back. But he is still not happy: he has
been issued with a fine of 500 shekels ($115) by the police. Nomi's phone is
busy, he says. Can I help get the fine reduced?
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the
author of the forthcoming "Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and
Democratic State" published by Pluto Press, and available in the United States
from the University of Michigan Press. His website is
www.jkcook.net
