Another day at an Israeli Checkpoint

This is the scene that 30 year old May B and here two children plunge into every morning as they make their trek to work and school. For May it is the same routine every day; first she drops her husband off at work in the city centre at about 8 am then she makes her way to her children’s kindergarten and finally she arrives at her East Jerusalem office sometime after 9.30.

“I spend more time in this car than in my house sometimes…For my children this is not a normal life! When it takes too long to come back home they sleep in the car so that later they are not able to go to bed at the same time as other children!” she said.

May’s story is common enough for any working mom living in a huge metropolis making a 50 kilometer commute too and from work. But her circumstances are slightly different. Ramallah is a city with less then 300 thousand inhabitants and May’s office is only eight kilometres from where she lives. May’s problem has less to do with traffic congestion and more to do with Israeli checkpoints.

A queue at Qalandya checkpoint,

Built as a way of restricting Palestinian movement during the Second Intifada in 2000, Israeli checkpoints dot the West Bank. Over 600 checkpoints and barriers often manned by Israeli soldiers have been erected throughout the West Bank in the past decade. Israel says they are an important tool in its fight to stop attacks on Israeli targets. But in reality they impede the free movement of people and goods throughout the West Bank and into Israel.

For May and her family, Qalandia is the main checkpoint that she passes through daily. The checkpoint could be mistaken for a toll gate at a distance; however the imposing guard tower, the dark concrete “Apartheid Wall” and the heavily armed soldiers and security guards soon dispel this notion.

Everyday as May drives up to the checkpoint it is with a sense of trepidation. Her daily challenge is to spend as little time as possible passing through. As she snakes slowly forward, she hopes, the driver in front of her won’t be stopped and interrogated, she hopes the soldiers, many of them still teenagers, will not be in a bad mood, or worse, want to have a “little fun” by delaying the mother and her children with random searches.

As May’s car slowly coasts up towards the barrier she passes a guard house, from here, an unseen soldier barks out orders in Hebrew. Rega!! (wait) or Saa! (go), the idea that Palestinians are unable to speak Hebrew doesn’t appear to be taken into consideration, any failure to comply usually results in a tirade of abuse and shouting, in Hebrew.

Today things however move smoothly and May is beckoned forward by a bored looking youth chewing gum and with an M16 assault rifle slung over his shoulder. She has her blue identity card ready. May is what is know as an “East Jerusalemite”, although not an Israel citizen, she has residency in Jerusalem in the form of a blue covered identity card, and can travel freely throughout Israel. It’s a luxury her husband, a West Bank Palestinian with a green identity card, doesn’t have.

Inside the terminal of Qalandya checkpoint

As she approaches the soldier, she shows her and her children’s documentation and then is ordered to stop the vehicle. May is then ordered to open the boot for inspection. Once satisfied, the soldier hands back her papers with a curt nod and signals the car behind her to move forward.

The entire process from when she joined the line of cars crossing the checkpoint to when she left, a traveling distance of a 100 meters, has taken 30 minutes, today May is lucky.

“Sometimes my parents say that my life has becoming terrible (waiting at the checkpoints).....they say I will be forced to stop working in Jerusalem I will do it but I will be not happy of that…” May said.

May loves Jerusalem, her parents, family, friends, work and her childhood memories are in the city. The only thing missing is her husband who can’t live there.

“My sons are supposed to be lucky because unlike the majority of Palestinian children, at least, they are allowed to go to the sea, but during the week-end I’m too tired to go anywhere, I don’t want to drive,” she said.

May’s story is no different to thousands of others trying to cross checkpoints, either into Israel or just between West Bank towns and villages.

An estimated 74 percent of all roads in the West Bank are controlled by some type of obstacle, be it a checkpoint, earth or concrete barrier, a gate or even a trench cutting a road in two.

Apart from slowing down the flow of traffic of people checkpoints also hinder the flow of goods between through the West Bank. The removal of checkpoints is regarded as one of the key conditions that need to be met in order to help rejuvenate the Palestinian economy.

In a report released by the World Bank, early in June 2009, the bank pointed out that the restrictions of trade and travel mean Palestinians are becoming increasingly dependent on aid to survive.

A view around Qalandya

“The fact that the West Bank economy is dramatically failing to fulfill its potential, even in periods of relative stability in the security situation, only underlines the extent to which economic restrictions are still preventing any real upturn in economic activity," the bank said. "As a result of the Israeli security regime, the Palestinian economy has hollowed out, with the productive sectors declining and the public sector growing, as more of the population looks to the public sector for employment and assistance in coping with the impact of unemployment," it said.

Under U.S. pressure to ease Palestinian hardship, Israel has recently removed several key West Bank checkpoints, including one at the entrance to the city of Jericho. Hundreds more remain in place, limiting Palestinian travel and trade.. The Israeli military says the move is in line with a policy of easing movement and improving daily life for the Palestinians as long as calm prevails.

“A Palestinian can now drive from Jenin in the northern West Bank to Hebron in the south without being stopped and checked at any permanent roadblocks” the Israeli military said in a statement. However in reality the situation appears to be very different. At several of the roadblocks the structures have not been removed, allowing for Israeli soldiers to reoccupy the checkpoints at short notice Earlier this month the Israeli Army announced on its web-site that checkpoints would be removed at Atara and At-Tayba to "further ease the daily life of the Palestinian population".

The army claims that the At-Tayba checkpoint was completely removed; allowing free passage to the Jordan Valley area, while at Atara, Palestinians would have quick passage from Ramallah to the cities in the north. However UN teams found that the Atara checkpoint was still physically intact, including a concrete watchtower. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that they will re-classify the installation as a "partial checkpoint", because the Israeli military has decided not to impose 24-hour checks.

OCHA claims that on the same days, the Israeli army began to enlarge an existing checkpoint, known as the Enav checkpoint, near the city of Tulkarem.

Israel’s move falls well short of Palestinian demands that it pull its forces back from West Bank population centres to positions they held before the outbreak of the second Intifada. It is also to have very little impact on the lives of thousands of Palestinians such as May, who will continue to make the daily trek to work enduring hours of dehumanising searches and delays.