(This was originally posted June 2008)
OCCUPIED WEST BANK — Let’s be clear about this. The Israeli checkpoint system in the West Bank is an absolutely ruthless act of anger, viciousness, and power. It is generally said that the Israeli system is designed to control Palestinian movement. Yet any international’s experience with the system will confirm that the Israelis have set up the routine as an attempt to dehumanize the Palestinians. The Israelis use the simple experience and necessity of travel as another opportunity to expose the Palestinians to feelings of humiliation and powerlessness and, at times, to even ensure their deaths. Such is a life spent in occupation and under Apartheid.
B’Tselem, a human rights organization, estimates that there are approximately 100 permanent checkpoints in the West Bank, an area which is only 5,860 km2 (about the size of Delaware). In addition to these permanent checkpoints, Israel props up dozens of ad-hoc or “flying” sites each week in different locations. The Israeli Army, the Israel Border Patrol, and private (civilian) security companies staff the permanent and flying checkpoints.
At checkpoints, Israeli soldiers look through bags, check for papers, and pull individuals for interrogation. The logic of the Israelis who staff the checkpoints is an equation of ever-changing amounts of mercurial attitudes and capriciousness, and always contains the threat of physical brutality.
The checkpoint system affects public health, education, the economy, and simple community activities. Lines at the checkpoints can be long and there is never a guarantee that a Palestinian will be allowed through. In fact, there is not even a guarantee that a checkpoint will be open. If it is closed, then Palestinians will be unable to cross at that area. Students, teachers, and professors can never be certain that they will make it to class; employees do not know if they will be able to work; the religious do not know if they will be allowed to worship at the mosque or church; relatives and friends cannot be sure that they will see each other as planned.
Israeli soldiers even will detain Palestinian women who are in labor; such cruelty resulted in at least five women in 2007 giving birth at a checkpoint. Israel uses the checkpoints to deny other forms of healthcare to the Palestinians. B’Tselem and the United Nations OCHA Occupied Palestinian Territory office are documenting the role played by the checkpoints (and the accompanying apartheid permit system) in causing deaths of Palestinians.
(Above: This is a 2001 image of the checkpoint locations. source: http://www.ccmep.org/delegations/maps/palestine.html .)
The checkpoint system produces multiple stresses. As Dr. Frantz Fanon described in his works and to which the UN, NGOs, and ordinary women and men also can attest, the stresses of living with this Apartheid system seeps into the souls of individuals and can influence familial and social relationships. At certain checkpoints, Israel male and female soldiers, often in their late teens, prohibit Palestinian male teen-agers and young men between the ages of 16-35 from crossing. What are the consequences of such experiences, to be constantly confronted or ordered about by young Israelis carrying weapons and whose finger is always on the trigger of these guns, for Palestinian teen-agers and young adults?
And one cannot help but wonder about the Israeli soldier at the checkpoint. Perhaps he is only in his late teens. What does he do to relieve the day’s events, a day when he prevented a sick person from accessing health care, when he prevented someone from getting to work, when he forced a Palestinian woman to give birth at the checkpoint.
Clearly, the checkpoint is a system that removes the humanity from its Israeli participants.
- Julia Good Fox
June 2008
For more information about the checkpoints, see:
See My Other Posts about Palestine and Indian Country
Checkpoint 1 – Thoughts on Outsourcing and Outlawing Indigenous Thinking
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