In peace talks with Israel, Palestinian negotiators insist on the removal of checkpoints that deny freedom of movement in the West Bank
HAWARA CHECKPOINT, WEST BANK — Under the supervision of an Israeli soldier clutching an M-16 assault rifle, Qassem Saleh begins his daily disrobing.
First, he lifts his bright orange shirt so the soldier can see there's no bomb strapped to his torso. Then, after passing through a metal floor-to-ceiling turnstile, he undoes his belt and hands it over for examination to a second soldier, along with his wallet, mobile phone and cigarettes.
The second soldier peruses his documents and asks his reason for travel. The answer is a simple one: Mr. Saleh goes through all this, not to board a plane or visit a prison, but so that he can go home to his family after a day's studies at An-Najah University in Nablus. It's a process Israel says is necessary for security, but one that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians consider their daily humiliation.
With a curt nod, Mr. Saleh's documents are returned and he is allowed to pass. The whole process takes an hour and half, turning what would normally be a 15-minute commute each way between An-Najah and his home in the nearby village of Beeta into an ordeal that often sucks up a quarter of his day."If a person was carrying anything [illegal] do you think he'd pass through here?" the 23-year-old media student said as he walked through a crowd of taxi drivers shouting offers of rides to the cities of Ramallah and Hebron to the south. "They just do this to humiliate us, to annoy us into leaving this country."
Tensions run high at the Hawara checkpoint - a long tunnel of cement blocks and metal fencing covered by a tin roof - among the most notorious of the more than 500 permanent and temporary roadblocks set up by the Israeli army inside the West Bank. Along with two others, it cuts off the 177,000 residents of Nablus from the rest of the West Bank.
Few cars are allowed to pass Hawara, and there are three more checkpoints before a Palestinian from Nablus could reach East Jerusalem, ordinarily an hour's drive to the south. Depending on Israel's interpretation of the security situations, any of the checkpoints can be closed for hours or days at a time. Israeli traffic, meanwhile, flows freely to and from the nearby Jewish settlements of Bracha and Yitzhar along roads Palestinians are barred from using.
A report released last week by the International Committee for the Red Cross singled out the checkpoints and the isolation of Nablus as key parts of a system that denies Palestinians "normal and dignified lives." The broad rebuke of Israel for its 40-year-old occupation of the West Bank was surprising from an organization that makes an effort to remain neutral.
Another report, commissioned by the Israeli military, found such places are rife with physical and verbal abuse, as well as humiliations, gratuitous delays and bribe-taking.
Removing some of the checkpoints that carve the West Bank up into disconnected pieces is a key demand of the Palestinian negotiators taking part in peace talks with Israel, which restarted last week after a near seven-year lull. Speaking at a donors' conference in Paris yesterday, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called for all checkpoints and roadblocks to be lifted so that Palestinians could have freedom of movement and trade inside the West Bank.
Though Hawara separates Palestinian cities, rather than Palestinians from reaching Israel, the Israeli military says the post is necessary for security. According to the Israeli military, soldiers at the checkpoint have prevented the smuggling of 31 explosive devices and 27 other weapons so far this year. Those numbers are the highest of any checkpoint in the West Bank.
Lieutenant Nir Balzam, commander of the Israeli military unit overseeing Hawara last week, said that roughly 25,000 people a day pass through Hawara via one or two "fast" lines for women and children and three longer lines for men.
He acknowledged frequent friction between the Palestinians and his troops, but defended the measures taken as necessary because of the violent militant groups inside Nablus. "Nablus is the capital of terror in the West Bank, so this is one of the most dangerous checkpoints in the West Bank," Lt. Balzam said as he watched perhaps 100 Palestinians wait in four long lines on a sunny afternoon last week. Many were carrying large bags - gifts bought ahead of this week's Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha - that were put through a portable X-ray machine mounted on a white Chevrolet truck.
Lt. Balzam said that while the vast majority of those crossing Hawara were only heading to jobs or school, every day brought the possibility that someone might attack the checkpoint with a bomb or other weapon.
"Our biggest dilemma, the whole checkpoint dilemma, is [finding] the balance between security and the life of the people around you," the 23-year-old soldier said in an interview supervised by public-relations staff from the Israeli army. "Anywhere you put a checkpoint, there's going to be anger."
There are flare-ups of anger and violence on both sides. The Israeli military report released on Sunday found that of 1,000 soldiers interviewed, 25 per cent said they had witnessed or taken part in the abuse of Palestinians at a checkpoint.
Lt. Balzam said his soldiers are specially trained on how to treat Muslims, and that all soldiers spoke at least some Arabic. After the release of the report, the army said it would increase instruction for soldiers stationed at checkpoints. But former soldiers say that no amount of training will prevent the abuse.
"Every half a year, a report like this comes out, and every half a year, people pretend they're surprised," said Mikhael Manekin, director of Breaking the Silence, a group made up of Israeli reservists that has collected hundreds of testimonies from soldiers regarding checkpoint abuse. "What Israeli society has to understand is that the problem is not in the army. The problem is with the checkpoints themselves. Checkpoints breed abuse. That's an axiom."
On the afternoon that Mr. Saleh and his classmates headed home through Hawara under the supervision of Lt. Balzam and his soldiers, two middle-aged Israeli women stood to the side taking notes. They were members of Checkpoint Watch, an all-volunteer, all-women Israeli organization dedicated to reporting the nitty-gritty of daily life at places such as Hawara.
Their reports are unpleasant reading. "It is hard to describe in words the rage and humiliation of the hundreds of thousands crossing every day," reads one recent report from Hawara. "The sight of people undressing and dressing publicly - men in front of young women - the scornful behaviour of the soldiers, the smoking and eating in the presence of those fasting in these days of Ramadan, the never-ending standing in queues, the fear that you will not be able to cross - all of this recurs and reveals itself to us on a daily basis as we stand at the various roadblocks, and we are unable to do anything about it."
Despite feeling helpless, Daphne Banai, a 58-year-old volunteer at Checkpoint Watch, spends several days a week observing at Hawara and other checkpoints. She says that after four years of volunteering and despite such high-profile incidents as the arrest of Hussam Abdo, a then-14-year-old boy discovered in 2004 with a suicide belt at Hawara - she's not convinced the checkpoint system does anything to protect Israeli citizens, since those genuinely seeking to do Israel harm simply go around, through the tree-dotted hills that surround Nablus.
She acknowledges, however, that her opinion is a minority among Israelis. After waves of suicide bombers struck Israeli cities between 2000 and 2005, most Israelis credit the checkpoints - as well as the 700-kilometre barrier under construction that weaves through the West Bank, walling off Israel from most of the people it occupies - with the drop in violence during the past two years. Even as peace negotiations get under way, and Mr. Abbas pleads with the Israeli government to make concessions, few want to see the strict security measures lifted.
And despite the hopeful talk at last month's peace summit in Annapolis, Md., few Palestinians expect anything to change either. As Ms. Banai does her work, a young woman wearing a bright green head scarf emerges from Hawara's final metal turnstile and, appearing exhausted, drops her heavy bags on the ground. Though 20-year-old Riham Abdel Hamid passed relatively quickly, in under half an hour, she now has to wait for her male cousin to get the same clearance, something that will take upward of another hour.
Seven years after the checkpoint was built, it's simply become a fact of life for Palestinians. "It's a catastrophe," Ms. Abdel Hamid said. "People just got used to it. They're in a state of despair, and they expect it will never get better."
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