Israel’s dramatic victory in the 1967 Six-Day War won it military and economic control over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and nearly a million of their inhabitants. The Israeli army was immediately faced with many difficult questions, and particularly complex was the issue of Palestinian freedom of movement—whether they could travel, and where. At first, movement was relatively free: in 1972 a general exit permit was issued, allowing unrestricted movement between Israel and the occupied territories. Palestinians traveled into Israel frequently, seeking work and reuniting with family from whom they had been separated since 1948. A Palestinian labor force in Israel began to develop.
In 1987, the first Intifada erupted. Israel sought stricter control over its boundaries, and according to the Israeli organization B’Tselem, began requiring Gaza Strip residents to get individual permits in 1989. And when the Gulf War began in 1991, Israel revoked the general exit permit altogether: each Palestinian now needed an individual permit to enter Israel.
In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, starting what became known as the peace process with a handshake on the White House lawn. That same year, the IDF responded to Palestinian terror by imposing a general closure on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. To enforce this closure, the IDF erected a new system of surveillance: checkpoints along the boundaries of the occupied territories.
August 6: Jalame Checkpoint
It is 3pm on Friday afternoon. Army-issue camouflage netting barely shades a soldier from the intense sunlight. Several others stand armed, in full uniform and metal helmet, waiting for Palestinians to approach. A crude structure consisting of a few cement blocks serves as the soldiers’ reception desk. A group of Palestinian women, confidently carrying bundles on their heads, approach the checkpoint. The soldiers greet them cordially. Though Friday is the Muslim day of rest, many Palestinians have adapted to the Israeli work-week. These women all have ID cards, and they pass into the West Bank with no trouble.
I’ve accompanied the Israeli human rights group MachsomWatch on a routine observation of the Jalame checkpoint. MachsomWatch, founded in 2001 in response to reports of human rights abuses at surveillance posts around Jerusalem, has become a regular feature at many major checkpoints. The group’s 400 members–all Israeli women–regularly monitor IDF behavior at 20 checkpoints—key travel arteries throughout the West Bank and along the boundary with Israel. By observing, MachsomWatch volunteers hope to ensure the human rights of the civilians passing through.
The makeshift structure at Jalame serves as the transfer point for merchandise between Israel and the West Bank. Jalame is being rebuilt, a shiny new facility resembling an airport terminal emerging to replace the old. As we examine the structure, members of MachsomWatch debate the pros and cons of this development: it will improve conditions for both soldiers and civilians, providing more lanes, bathrooms, and running water. But on the other hand, permanent checkpoints will help to institutionalize the controversial route of the barrier, which cuts deep into the West Bank.
This conversation is interrupted by a female soldier. She is angry at the activists. As a result of a report in which they noted that the checkpoint was routinely opened at 6am, and not at 5am as required, the soldiers’ commanders now wake them at 3:30 in order to be briefed on security issues before being shipped off to work. The soldiers work the morning rush hour without sufficient light or food; breakfast is at nine. A MachsomWatch volunteer tells her that the IDF, not the Palestinians or a human rights organization, is responsible for these conditions. This response is of little comfort to the soldier.
In some ways, though, MachsomWatch is responsible. Though only three years old, the organization has become a major actor in the precarious power dynamic at Israeli checkpoints. Write-ups of the MachsomWatch activists’ observations are published online and are delivered monthly to IDF officials, Knesset members, and the media. According to the organization’s spokeswoman, army officers regularly visit the MachsomWatch web site to view their reports.
The checkpoints served Israeli settlers, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinians living in the occupied territories. But, according to the Jerusalem Quarterly File, during the early Oslo period many settlers began to grow anxious about waiting on lines with Palestinians–they feared for their safety and they didn’t like the long waits. So Israel constructed a new system of bypass roads upon which only Jews could drive. Meanwhile, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians continued to use the original checkpoints, which still mainly followed the internationally recognized boundary between Israel and the territories–the “green line.”
Then in September, 2000, the second Intifada broke out. Israel sought to control its borders more tightly, and the IDF increased the number of checkpoints, placing many more in population centers and travel arteries within the West Bank.
August 6: Checkpoint 250
It is nearing Shabbat, and when we arrive the soldiers of Checkpoint 250 are nowhere to be seen. Several vehicles sit waiting to cross. This checkpoint is located partway between Jalame and a suburb of Jenin; it’s designed to protect the road to Ganim and Kadim–two Israeli settlements –that cuts out to the east. Unlike Jalame, which also serves Israelis, this checkpoint is meant only for Palestinians.
Suddenly the soldiers appear and begin checking identity papers. The procession is orderly, though at gunpoint. Meanwhile, I look around for a bathroom. The Checkpoint 250 headquarters is a trailer, sheltered by three Caterpillar bulldozers and several cement blocks. I gingerly ask to use the bathroom. The soldiers advise against it, but I have to go. On the wall of the stall, I find a poster explaining where weapons could be concealed within a car.
The poster is no joke: the checkpoint staff are often deprived of the resources and training necessary to do their job. In July, a soldier was indicted for beating a Palestinian at a checkpoint near Nablus. His fellow soldiers protested the charge, claiming that he was the victim of an impossible situation for which his army had not adequately prepared him. In a petition sent to the IDF Chief of Staff, his comrades demanded, “How can a mere six soldiers cope with more than 5,000 people, examine their papers, search their belongings, make medical decisions without knowing whether it is a medical emergency or not?” But this ratio is a way of life at most checkpoints.
By the summer of 2002, according to the Palestinian NGO Miftah, 120 checkpoints divided the West Bank into 300 separate areas, each requiring passage through a checkpoint to get to another. Countless unmanned roadblocks–dirt piles, cement blocks–also prevented vehicles from passing on numerous roads.
That year, Israel began erecting the Separation Wall along a unilaterally-declared boundary with the West Bank. At some points, the route approximates the green line; at other points, it cuts far to the east, annexing thousands of acres of Palestinian land. Increasingly, Palestinians’ journeys to work, to visit family, and to receive medical care required passing through the checkpoints.
August 14: Barta’a Checkpoint
Two days before we plan to observe Barta’a, an Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades militant detonates a bomb at a roadblock near the Qalandiyah checkpoint–the main passage between Ramallah and Jerusalem. Israeli intelligence reports that he was en route from Jenin to Haifa, intending to conce
al the bomb in a baby carriage and detonate it in a crowded market. Seeing that inspections of vehicles had intensified–and that he was unlikely to make it into Israel–he set off the bomb by remote control near a row of Palestinian taxis. The explosion killed three Palestinian taxi drivers and wounded six border policemen.
The Barta’a checkpoint, located about a mile into the West Bank, consists of a barbed wire fence on the west side, a security road, and a higher barbed-wire fence on the east. Vehicles waiting to enter Israel form a line, and pedestrians file through a cement channel to a metal detector, which I later discover is broken.
This week, checkpoint tensions are higher than usual. But the commander at Barta’a greets us cordially. He says that he will cooperate with us provided that we address any concerns directly to him. I accompany Sarit, an experienced member of MachsomWatch, observing the return of people to the Palestinian territories. A small boy named Ashraf, claiming to be 11 years old but looking closer to eight, wants to sell us coffee. Sarit treats me to a plastic cup full of steaming black coffee at the bargain price of one shekel–about twenty cents. On the other side, people selling sickly sweet ices, kebabs, perfume, and socks serve as a “duty free” store welcoming you to the Palestinian territories.
Suddenly, the shift leader calls the commander over. A young man waiting to cross holds a permit to enter Israel, but also has a strange pipe in his car. The soldiers are unequipped to deal with the situation. They have only metal detectors, which cannot distinguish metal objects–such as weapons–from the metal of the vehicle itself. They also have no way of detecting explosives. One of the soldiers’ only resources was a training session they’d attended on the interiors of cars, after which they were supposed to be able to disassemble vehicles and distinguish real car parts from fake ones.
As we leave for the day, another MachsomWatch activist tells me that several weeks earlier, a terrorism expert demonstrated the proper inspection of a vehicle for the soldiers on duty. He disassembled a random Palestinian car, pointing out all the possible hiding places for weapons, while people seeking passage waited impatiently. Most soldiers know that they have neither the time nor the expertise to inspect cars so thoroughly.
Between 2001 and 2004, many groups–MachsomWatch among them–reported human rights violations committed by IDF soldiers at checkpoints. So in early 2004, Ariel Sharon appointed Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel to overhaul the checkpoint system. Soon afterward, in March, Spiegel reported to MachsomWatch that the checkpoint system had been revamped. Some checkpoints had been dismantled, he said, and some improved.
But according to MachsomWatch, the situation had changed little. And then came Israel’s assassination of prominent Hamas leaders and Hamas’ threats of retaliation. In April, the checkpoints tightened still further, closing off the West Bank for much of the spring.
August 21 : Barta’a Checkpoint
Barta’a is composed of an eastern and a western village: Barta’a el-Garbiyah–in Israel–and Barta’a el-Sharkiyah, beyond the green line. The border between the Israeli and Palestinian Barta’as is distinguished only by an especially potholed section of the road that cuts through the market district of town. The villages have lived as one since the 1967 War, and the bonds are powerful. One product of the union is hundreds of mixed Israeli-Palestinian marriages, and thousands of children. If the Israeli left succeeds in its goal of moving the Separation Wall back to the green line, the two villages will again be divided against their will.
Barta’a’s checkpoint, like Jalame’s, is being forged in steel. When we return for a second observation of the checkpoint, we discover that it has been moved south to the construction site of the permanent station. Checkpoint traffic has been divided into three lanes, each marked by a Hebrew sign: “Stop for Inspection,” “Settlement,” and “Pedestrians.” The “Settlement” sign signals to Jewish drivers that they may bypass the checkpoint. Arab citizens of Israel are not permitted to use this lane, and are subject to the same inspection process as non-citizens. Indeed, we meet two Israeli Arab women from Jaffa, on their way back from a visit to an herbalist in the West Bank, held up in the lengthy Palestinian line.
We question the commander about this policy: wouldn’t a more reasonable division be lanes for citizens and non-citizens? The policy was created by the District Coordination Office, which administers the checkpoints, and is beyond his jurisdiction, he says. “But few settlers cross on Shabbat,” we persist. “Couldn’t that lane be used for Arab cars to be inspected?” The commander explains, “This lane must be free for security vehicles to pass.” Finally, we wonder why settlers aren’t subject to security inspections as well. Though he admits that settlers have instigated violence against Palestinians, the commander says, “Our job is to protect the Jews from Arab terror.”
The next inspection is that of a flashy car. The owner, a young Palestinian, shows off his speakers to the soldier by blasting techno music. He and the soldier are about the same age. The soldier lingers, chatting to the young Palestinian. His inspection has ceased, and the two are discussing cars, a common interest. For an instant, one can almost imagine that these two young men are friends. Then the car takes off and the soldier turns away, preparing for his next inspection.
