Washington Report, July 2006, pages 22-23

Special Report

Israeli Checkpoints Shame Oppressed and Oppressor Alike

By Delinda C. Hanley

THE LATE, great Israel Shahak, who translated Israel’s Hebrew-language press and wrote unflinching books and articles exposing Israeli racism, would be shocked by the behavior of Israeli soldiers at 605 checkpoints in the West Bank today. In a 1983 article, Shahak recounted a chilling Haaretz interview the previous year with the local council leader of the illegal Ariel settlement, Ya’akov Paitelson, who moved to Israel from the U.S.S.R. in 1972. “Only the brutal survive,” Paitelson told interviewer Amos Elon, and when it comes to Israelis like Ariel Sharon “the Arabs have no chance.” Paitelson also admitted: “I definitely understand them. They don’t feel good. They are an occupied people. I myself come from an occupied country—Lithuania. I know what this is like.”

“Doesn’t it bother you to be the occupier now?” Elon asked the Israeli settler.

With a smile, Paitelson replied:“On the contrary, it is simply great!”

Now, 24 years later, Paitelson would be delighted by the next generation of Israeli soldiers and settlers.

In its annual report released May 23, Amnesty International points out that “military blockades and restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of Palestinians within the occupied territories” have led to “high unemployment and poverty.”

The U.N. Population Fund, UNFPA, has charged that travel restrictions mean Palestinians often cannot reach and use essential medical facilities. Between 2000 and 2004 more than 60 Palestinian women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, according to the World Health Organization, and 36 of their babies died as a result.

In addition to causing poverty and physical harm, the checkpoints inflict humiliation and mental anguish.

A December 2004 videotape taken by Machson Watch, an Israeli women’s human rights group that monitors checkpoints, showed Wissam Tayam, a young Palestinian musician, forced to play his violin for IDF soldiers before they would let him pass. Yoram Kaniuk, author of a book about a Jewish violinist who was forced to perform for a Nazi concentration-camp commander, wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronot: “Of all the terrible things done at the roadblocks, this story is one which negates the very possibility of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.”

A Washington Report subscriber passed along a letter describing another incident at a checkpoint. Written on May 2 of this year, it arrived just before Mother’s Day. Rev. Clarence and Joan Musgrave, who work at St. Andrews Church of Scotland in Jerusalem, have stayed in touch by e-mail with their Presbyterian congregation at Ferryhill Parish Church in Aberdeen, Scotland. (See their church’s Web site: <http://www.ferryhillpc.org.uk/missionpart.htm>. The following event is recounted in Letter No. 263.)

The Musgraves recently visited friends in Jayyous, Abdul-Latif Khaled, a groundwater hydrologist, and his wife, Lana, a teacher, who hasn’t been paid for months. Lana told the Musgraves her husband comes home from work utterly depressed. To help him work through his sadness, she urged him to write about his day. She showed them his April 28 report.

For the past three years Israeli soldiers have manned three main checkpoints for people going into Nablus from Jayyous. One of them is Beit Iba. Passing through this checkpoint every day is a tremendous waste of time, Abdul-Latif explained in his story, and causes senseless humiliation and suffering.

“I believe the checkpoints were created by the Israeli soldiers to destroy us Palestinian people psychologically,” Abdul-Latif wrote. Before the checkpoints, his trip to Nablus took 20 minutes. Now it takes an average of two and a half hours each way.

“Two days ago I left my work in Nablus at 3:00 p.m.” wrote Abdul-Latif. “I reached Beit Iba checkpoint at 3:20 p.m. As usual, there were two lines, one for young males and the other for women and elderly people.”

Elderly is a flexible term, Abdul-Latif noted. One day it can include a doctor, or a disabled person, or anyone over 40. The next day the rules change according to the mood of the soldiers.

Standing in a long line of women and the elderly, it took Abdul-Latif around one and a half hours to reach the two young Israeli soldiers. “One soldier checks papers,” he explained, “while the other keeps his gun raised and pointing at us Palestinians.”

Then Abdul-Latif noticed a woman who looked as if she was in the last month of her pregnancy. She was carrying in her arms a sleeping child about 2 to 3 years old.

“She was exhausted,” Abdul-Latif said, and she asked the soldier, “Please let me pass. I have been waiting for a long time in the line and you can see I’m so tired. Here is my ID card.” The soldier shouted at her to go back to the line, that there was no way for her to go through.

Abdul Latif comforted the young woman: “Come beside me. I will talk to him.” The soldier finished with an old man, then shouted again at the lady, “I told you to go back.”

Abdul-Latif politely explained to the soldier: “‘Look, I told her to come beside me, and don’t you see that she may be 9 months pregnant and carrying another child also? Look, she will fall down at any moment, like that other woman a few minutes ago.’

“The soldier said to me, ‘Give me your ID card.’ I thought that he wanted to check me, but then I realized that he wanted to teach me a lesson. He said: ‘I am the commander here and the one who decides—not you.’ I told him that it was OK, and I was asking him to help the lady. 

“He said: ‘You go back to the young people’s line, for you are 45, not 50.’ (I think he is not good at mathematics, because I am 40.) I said to him: ‘Today you let people who are 45 through also. I think you want to punish me.’

“The Israeli soldier, I think he’s around 22 or 23, replied, ‘I’m the commander who decides. Take your ID card or I will keep it.’ I took the ID card, and I said to him: ‘Still I do not know what mistake I made. I was thinking of the woman beside me and I was trying to help her.’ Then he said: ‘She will go back also.’

“I started to go back, but then I said to him: ‘Remember one day you were in your mother’s womb or sleeping in her arms. Help your mother.’ Then I walked back to the end of the line, and when I turned around, I saw the lady following me, crying, exhausted and desperate. 

“I don’t know the lady, and I couldn’t do anything for her,” Abdul-Latif lamented. “All I know is that she is a mother and pregnant, and I saw her like any mother in this world. I felt sorry for this lady, and for the mother of the soldier also.

“Then I had to start waiting in the young people’s line. Finally, I reached Jayyous at 7:30 p.m., back to my home full of sadness, and waiting for tomorrow to start again a new tormenting travel.”

Most Jewish young people in Israel are required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Thousands have learned how to humiliate their neighbors at checkpoints. Palestinians are beaten or forced to stand for hours in the sun, waiting, and fathers are shamed in front of their frightened children.

While it’s difficult to find recent figures about domestic violence in Israel, in 1998 alone 67,000 Israeli women were victims of it, according to the Jerusalem Post. It only makes sense that, if one commits physical and psychological cruelty as part of your day job, it’s hard not to bring it home at night. Some Israeli mothers and wives monitor checkpoint abuses and are calling for an end to Israel’s brutal occupation. They want to save not only the Palestinians, but their own sons and husbands as well.

Checkpoints won’t vanish when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert begins unilaterally to redraw Israel’s borders and remove illegal West Bank settlers. The annexation wall will require checkpoints, and Israel will continue to isolate and control Palestinian towns near the settlements it wants to keep.

When Israel does give up its isolated and indefensible outposts, which have become a  long-term liability, it will cost $10 billion or more. Olmert will ask U.S. taxpayers to foot the bill. Washington can and should refuse any further aid to Israel until it withdraws to 1967 borders, recognizes Palestine, renounces violence and dismantles all settlements and checkpoints. Israelis will be better human beings when they are no longer occupiers.

Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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