But I'm Innocent, I Swear!

Although I have been here for more than eight months, there have been restrictions on my travel into the West Bank. It is only now, with only 2 ½ months to go, that I am venturing in to Ramallah regularly to volunteer with a women’s organization there. I feel like now I have a lot less to lose if I get busted and booted out of the country.

So, after all this time, I am now experiencing a ‘real’ checkpoint, Khalandiya. Up until now the others were just checkpoints with training wheels. The first time I went through Khalandiya, my stomach was in knots. The only thing that I can liken it to is how Hollywood portrays prison security. Clanging bars, inaudible PA systems, red/green lights, and people routinized to a system that only convicted criminals should experience.

I’m not all that sure if I understood the whole process, but this is what I worked out of the system: You queue up at several turnstiles. (Actually, that’s not true. You queue up for one or two turnstiles. All of the rest aren’t manned.) The turnstiles are not your average waist-high subway turnstiles. These contraptions are about 10 feet high and connected to a fence. There are soldiers behind glass who regulate when the turnstile will operate. So, if you are standing in line, the soldiers may close that turnstile and you quickly run to the next available queue. There were two queue stampedes while I was there, but I just stayed put seeing how I had no idea what was going on to begin with.

Once you get through the first turnstile, you put your belongings through an x-ray machine and you show your ID to the aforementioned soldiers behind the glass. This is where I mucked up. I didn’t see them there, so I got my bag and proceeded to the next turnstile. After realizing my mistake, I turned back to see that I was holding up the queue of starving people wanting to get home for iftar dinner (it is the holy month of Ramadan). I slapped my passport against the glass and queued up for the second turnstile. Then the bus back to Jerusalem was stopped again as we left the parking lot for another ID check.

The whole process is definitely disconcerting. You can help but feel like the next turnstile will lead to a head shaving and delousing station. The soldiers behind the window aren’t even old enough to drink in the U.S., and I shudder when I think of their conditioning. One of the key components of the security checkpoint system is to promote an atmosphere of vulnerability and uncertainty among the Palestinian population--the arbitrariness of checkpoint closures has been well-documented by international observers. I just can’t stop thinking of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and how these kids are given so much power over other human beings.



While I’ve been working on my paper, I came across a U.N. report that noted between September 2000 and December 2002, 19 women and 29 newborn infants died at military checkpoints. From 2002 to 2005, 52 pregnant women gave birth at military checkpoints. I couldn’t even imagine being in labor and having some 18 year-old kid tell me that I am not allowed to go to the hospital because I am a ‘security threat’.

It helps to understand the ID system designed to restrict movement of Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I don’t think that most people are even aware that these checkpoints are within the Palestinian territories—not just keeping Palestinians out of Israel. In the OPT, there are three types of IDs: West Bank, Jerusalem or Gaza. West Bankers require a permit in order to cross checkpoints along the Green Line and into Jerusalem. They also require an additional permit to travel from one Palestinian town to another or to enter the industrial zone where they work. Someone with a Jerusalem ID is permitted to travel in and out of Jerusalem and throughout most of the OPT, but this is generally in theory. People are fearful of losing their Jerusalem residency and they are just as vulnerable to harassment by border and civil police.

Could you imagine if you lived in this system? A permit to pick your kids up from school? A checkpoint between you and your next Grande-double shot-no whip-Frappachino? That would be one short assed occupation if an entire generation of U.S. soccer moms were restricted from their Saturday morning Pilates class and the end-of-season sale at Talbots. Oooh, was that snarky? Sorry--Feeling kind of irritable right now. And I’m not even fasting anymore.