A Day at the Checkpoint by Hanan Elmasu
It's probably about 40 degrees outside, 50 degrees in the bus I'm squashed in, waiting to inch forward another car at the checkpoint which will take me into Jerusalem. Tired, frustrated, angry, I'm listening to the women beside me talk about whether or not they will be able to get through today without permits. One of them has a paper which says that she has an appointment to go to the eye hospital in Jerusalem, which she thinks will make things easier for her. I look at her eye and it is completely covered with gauze, a bruise showing from underneath it.
The checkpoints have been especially difficult these past few days after the attempted 'suicide' bombing in West Jerusalem last week. I'm escaping Beit Jala after having to spend two days of making coffee and food for well-wishing relatives and friends after the funeral of my uncle, who died two days ago. Three days before that I found out that another uncle whom i was close to in California had died. It had been a bit of a frustrating week. I decided to take the bus to Jerusalem from Beit Jala, as buses have always been a good place for me to think and try to put all the thoughts in my head into one organized space.
As I was sitting there in the heat, my thoughts turned to the checkpoint. I was thinking in particular about a story my aunt told me yesterday that stunned me. My uncle was not feeling well for some time. About a week ago, he started choking at home and stopped breathing. They were able to get some air through him, but his body was reacting severely to what was happening. Another uncle managed to get him into his car to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem to try and relieve some of his pain. When they got to the Bethlehem checkpoint, my uncle hurriedly explained what was happening, his only thought getting to the hospital as quickly as possible. The soldier asked for my ill uncle's ID card. It was not with him. My uncle was struggling to breathe in the backseat, and this soldier was holding the car up for twenty minutes while they callously argued about whether or not they should let him into Jerusalem.
Finally my uncle gave them his Jerusalem ID card and his wallet as collateral, and the soldier grudgingly let them through. This man holding a gun was arguing over a piece of paper while my uncle was struggling to death with breath that would not come out of his chest. The story stunned me, and it was the first time I had had the opportunity to really think about what it meant. My grandmother faced a similar situation after a stroke six months ago. How many of these stories have we heard where the outcome wasn't the same?
As I was sitting and thinking about all of this, a blonde haired foreign looking woman got on the bus and stood next to our seat. She seemed to be either one of those 'political tourist' making a pilgrimage to find out what all the fuss is all about, but not really learning anything, or on a 'religious' pilgrimage, looking for God in a den of stone lies, prostrating before the things that she is told will bring her salvation. Either way, not a person whom understands the implications of waiting at a checkpoint.
We finally reach the checkpoint. The doors open...thank God...fresh air! I see the bus driver smiling at the invisible soldier standing outside the door of the bus, trying to reassure him that everything is in order on the bus, thinking that if he jokes and laughs with this soldier, he will make the procedure a bit easier. This is obviously not the case today. The soldier that walks up the steps does not reflect the fake, desperate smile of the bus driver. He turns his head to scan the bus with the perma-scowl often found on all the faces of the soldiers at this checkpoint. His eyes alight on the blonde foreign woman standing in the aisle. Suddenly, the scowl changes to a smile, the eyes brighten with the hopes of subsequent flirting.
"Where are you from," asks the soldier, in perfect English. Sounds like New York. "Holland" replies the young woman, probably about 21, 22 years old. Soldier: "Hey, I just came back from Holland! Amsterdam?" Foreign woman: "YES! How did you like it?" Soldier: "Lots of beautiful women...May I see your passport?" The girl pulls out her passport and shows it to him from a distance, he barely glances at it, smiles at her and says thank you. Then he starts with the rest of the bus.
The perma-scowl returns as he grunts "hawiyeh" (ID card). All posture and pull out their ID cards. I notice the women beside me don't so I don't as well, just in case this plan works for them. He comes to our seat, smiles at the Dutch woman and is starting to flirt with her again. The soldier asks the women beside me for the ID cards. One of them rummages in her bag as the other with the injured eye explains that they are going to the hospital and shows him her magic appointment paper. He ignores the paper and demands her ID card again. She shows him the orange West Bank ID card which prohibits her from entering anywhere beyond the green line. He tells both women to get off the bus and takes their ID cards from them. They are resigned to the fact that it didn't work, hoping they won't get fined, and are probably already thinking about the long walk which will take them around the checkpoint into Jerusalem in this heat. It is now my turn to be checked.
Although I am Palestinian by ethnicity, I was born in North America and carry a Canadian passport. Sometimes it is apparent that I am not a 'local', other times it is not. Today it was not. "Hawiyeh" grunts the soldier. I glare at him and intentionally take a long time to find my passport, looking for a fight today. I finally pull out my passport. He looks at me suspiciously. "Wen al visa" (where is your visa?). This is all I needed. "What makes me different from your blonde friend? Why are you asking me for my visa when you barely looked at her passport?" The Dutch woman is looking at me bewildered, a bit clueless, and the soldier just looks bored and walks away without asking for the visa again. Not getting a response angers me to no end. He makes his way slowly through each aisle of th e bus. Each person who doesn't have the right papers has their ID card taken from them and is told to get off the bus and wait at the side of the checkpost. One old man is physically pushed off.
After this, the soldier points to the now empty chair and says to the Dutch woman, "here, there is a seat here if you want to sit". I watch with amazement as she smiles at him and makes for the seat. This was too much for me. I got up and walked to the back of the bus and calmly asked the soldier: "Where are you from?"
Soldier: "Ma? ('What?' in hebrew...suddenly his hebrew was better than his english). Hanan: "Where were you born? New York? Brooklyn, maybe? You've got a funny accent". Soldier: "I was born in New Jersey..." he's looking at me suspiciously again. Hanan: "I was born in San Francisco. I was raised in Vancouver, Canada...I have a passport because my parents couldn't return to the place they were born. You know where my parents were born? Jerusalem."
I started walking through the bus, asking people in Arabic where they were born. Ramla, Jerusalem, Lod, Ashqelon, Beer Sheva, etc, all cities within the green line, were the answers I got back from people who were looking at me like I was crazy. I then jumped off the bus and asked the men who were kicked off the bus, lined up by the side of the checkpoint and being questioned by soldiers now, in the process of being fined and 'detained' for trying to enter Jerusalem 'illegally'. The men responded with similar answers. Three older men said that they used to live in West Jerusalem.
The soldiers are getting angry, and I am starting to shout. "I'm just trying to make a point! What gives you or me more right to enter Jerusalem? What gives this foreign woman more right to pass through this unnatural checkpoint than this Palestinian man who grew up in West Jerusalem? What gives you the right to deny these people access to the place of their birth? Why are these men being arrested? People pass this checkpoint everyday to visit the place of birth of someone who lived 2000 years ago, yet these people are denied their right to visit their own place of birth every day? I wonder if Jesus decided to return to earth, would he have an ID card which would prohibit him from visiting his birth place?" (At this point, I admit, I was starting to get hysterical, but it was hot and it is something that I have thought about for sometime.)
An obviously well educated, soft spoken soldier tried to calm me down. "These men are doing something illegal. They know they are doing something illegal. This is why we have laws. We are only following the laws. You must understand this. A country without laws is not a country..." Me: "Which country in particular are you speaking of? Which laws are you speaking of? I don't believe that this man who grew up in West Jerusalem ever had a say in the laws that govern the place of his birth??? I am a Canadian citizen. We have laws in Canada, but the laws are created to protect the people of the land. Are these not the people of the land? How are you protecting them by arresting them for doing something completely normal?" The first soldier from the bus started getting angry and saying something in Hebrew. I got angrier. He told me to get back on the bus and shutup, pushing me towards the bus. This made me furious and I shouted back at him, "I have less right to enter Jerusalem than these men! I should be the one you are arresting. If these men are considered to be breaking the law and being arrested for it, then I am much more a criminal than they are. I should be the one you are arresting if you want to 'protect the people of the land'. God knows what I will do with my passport!!!"
The rest of the scene degenerated from that point onwards. In the end, I was not arrested and they let the men who were to be arrested go back to Bethlehem (I'm convinced just to get rid of me!), with the thought that there would be other opportunities to deal with them. In my anger, I had just wanted to prove an obvious point. The most disturbing thing throughout the entire experience was the looks of confusion and frustration which I was receiving from the other Palestinians on the bus. This saddened me to no end. They were angry that I was holding up the bus and I assume thought I was just a crazed woman.
Not one person on the bus came up to me and said anything about what happened afterwards. What is happening? How can a population be so disheartened to not fight for what is right? For its own basic right to life? To deal with injustice by confronting it and not merely accepting it? Why do Palestinians daily accept the fact that they cannot travel where they want freely? Why do Palestinians restricted from entering the Green Line, rather than take arduous backroads to avoid checkpoints, refuse this type of collective punishment and flood the checkpoints daily to enter a place where they have every right to be? Where will this hopelessness lead? Where is the rage that should be confronting this injustice? Where is the indignance which should accompany human beings being treated like they are poisonous tarantulas that need to be caged?
Where are the voices to protest an entire population being caged, suppressed, tortured, humiliated, degraded, erased from history? What right does a human being have to judge whether or not another human being should live or die? What right does a soldier have to deny life-saving treatment to another human being because of the colour of his plastic ID card? What right does a leader have to sell away with the stroke of a pen the rights of a nation? What right does an artificial state have to banish people from the place of their birth, to cantonize them into suffocation, to delegate them a footnote in history, to give them a restricted, fictional identity, to be the root of 50 year old songs of dispossession and catastrophe?
What dignity do we have left when three quarters of a nation can be called 'refugees', when we allow, condone and fund, the torture and 'murder' of innocent people for the sake of something that will never be attained, when we remain silent in the face of injustice and abuse? I am angry, and am wondering if there is anyone else who is still able to feel anger at something so basic? I am wondering what the world has to say for itself today?
Posted on Freedom-list in 1998.