Genesis and Revelation: Coping with Checkpoints
21 February 2002
North of the city and down in the green and brown valley,
you’ll find an environment unlike any other you can imagine.
A section of road shredded and dug out a meter and a half deep.
Rows of one meter cubed concrete blocks painted with the Israeli flag
painted on one side and the legend “End the Occupation” scribbled on the
other. A jeep, or perhaps two or
three with an armored personnel carrier, and a handful of soldiers. A few hundred Palestinians heading home in various directions
for the upcoming holiday. And in
the midst of it all, a microcosm of economic opportunism at its most basic forms
the sideline of a horrifically melancholic situation.
Ibrahim was an engineer in Jerusalem until about a year
ago, when he became an unemployed engineer living with his family in Ramallah.
Last fall, during Ramadan, he bought a few crates of tomatoes and
cucumbers from his cousin’s market shop and traveled down to the checkpoint
near the village of Surda on the road to Birzeit University and set up a
roadside market. Thousands of
Palestinians pass this Israeli-imposed checkpoint every day, forced to exit a
taxi on one side and walk a few hundred meters to the other.
Most people buy their vegetables on a daily basis, and Ibrahim, who has
since expanded his business to include onions, potatoes, and zucchini, decided
to become the new supplier for the mass demand.
And he’s not alone.
Eyad operates a tea and coffee stand down the hill on the
lower end of the checkpoint area; two shekels for a piping hot cup of your
choice. Two older men sell oranges
and bananas from a shabby donkey cart. If
you’re a bit hungrier, there’s a group of men selling kebab sandwiches
further up the hill towards the village. Come
springtime, you can expect to find a huge pile of watermelons for sale – last
May that was the lone item for sale at the checkpoint market.
The soldiers forbid most cargo cars and trucks from
approaching the checkpoint area, so drivers with heavy loads are in a bit of a
dilemma if they don’t find Dirar, a young Palestinian man who will rent them
his push-cart and his strength to lug their bags up the hill and past the
checkpoint. One day a soldier
decided to allow cars all the way up to the concrete blocks to unload their
goods to the other side, and Dirar complained that the soldier was hurting his
business!
It’s a simplistic, demand-driven, and easily entered
bazaar. You’ve just got to stay
on top of your external surroundings, lest the soldiers try to force your
customers elsewhere (a closed checkpoint means that pedestrians must
circumnavigate through the hills above or the valley below).
And so a checkpoint gives birth to a competitive micro-economy.
Of course, this is as rosy as the picture gets.
This is still, after all, a military checkpoint.
The events of the past week have sent the little market community into a
recession of sorts, to say nothing of what the mass public faces.
At this very checkpoint on the night of 15 February, a soldier was killed
by a Palestinian gunman under cover of fog – an indefensible obstacle.
A few nights later, six more Israeli soldiers were killed in a similar
situation at a checkpoint on the other side of Ramallah.
As expected, Israeli retaliation has been swift and fierce.
A combined air and sea assault on Gaza, missile strikes in the heart of
Ramallah, incursions into refugee camps around Nablus, and a near-total closure
of all 100+ checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
More than forty Palestinians had died as of Thursday, mostly security
personnel but also a number of civilians, including a ten-year-old girl in Khan
Yunis and her mother and uncle in the same house.
‘That ought to show them’, one would surmise is the
thought process of the Israeli decision-makers.
After all, the past 16 months of violence has been nothing if not one
“I’ll show you…” after another. And
where are we now, besides 900 Palestinians and 250 Israelis poorer?
This weekend begins the week-long Muslim holiday of the Eid
Al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice in reference to Abraham’s near sacrifice of
his son Isaac). Today at the
checkpoint there was an old man dragging a rather large goat over the ditch,
passed the concrete blocks, and up to the soldiers.
If the goat had his wish, the soldier would not have allowed them to
pass, for the beast was going to be supper.
It was about this time last year that this checkpoint madness began at
Surda. The IDF destroyed the road,
preventing cars from passing, and set up a station to check ID’s of passers-by
and, on sadly numerous occasions, violate basic human rights by detaining,
blindfolding, beating, arresting, denying medical care to, and in all ways
humiliating Palestinian civilians.
What goes around comes around and goes back again.
It’s time to bring this story to an end, and the final chapter can have
but one resolution: end the occupation. One
solution has revealed itself, and that is that the presence of soldiers and the
settlers whom they are charged to protect cannot endure, and the sooner everyone
gets used to the reality of a Palestinian state next to Israel, the sooner
everyone can begin to heal. It’s
a 35-year-old war that can’t be won with a bigger gun.
The lesson of the checkpoint market is further proof of the endurance of
those who live under occupation, and I doubt any of the vendors will be sorry to
see their market crumble when there is no checkpoint to force customers upon
them.
Take a walk across the Green Line, soldiers and settlers. The end is at hand. It’s not a defeat. It’s a victory.
Richard Johnson - Ramallah
Copyright (c) 2002 canadazone.com