Kalandia is not a checkpoint in
any recognized sense of the word ‘checkpoint’ which is a place where
documents and goods are checked, and through which people and goods
which are in order pass unimpeded. Kalandia is acres of concrete
block wasteland with its passages constructed in maze formation:
narrow, difficult to negotiate and seemingly without exit. At last,
however, you realize that the exit is there, and it is with a
profound sense of relief that you walk into the completely
mud-covered Ramallah side.
Crossing Kalandia as an EU
Passport holder with no restrictions, and without undergoing the
endless humiliations which are the lot of the rightful residents of
this land, is an experience that cannot be described – it can only
be experienced first hand, and everyone who can come and do so,
should do. No film, no commentary, no tales told by visitors can
prepare you for this. Tears flow unbidden and unchecked, and eyes
smile empathetically into mine. No words are necessary…
This, remember, is not a
frontier. Kalandia is a point on the road between the Palestinian
City of ‘East Jerusalem’ and the Palestinian city of Ramallah, in
the Palestinian lands of the ‘West Bank’, inhabited entirely by
Palestinians. Controlled, however, entirely by Israelis in every
tiny respect (except for the thoughts of those who wait). It is the
most outrageous restriction on human rights and civil liberties ever
seen – if the world DOES see, then why is this state of criminal
repression continuing?
And all this to deter what the
Israelis see as the waiting hordes of suicide bombers. How many
‘checkpoints’ per bomber? How many tons of concrete and how many
huge rocks per bomb? How many acres of Palestinian agricultural
land consecrated to each as-yet-undiscovered suicide bomber? How
many millions of US tax-dollars to protect each Jew from a very
minimal threat?
Everything in and around this
illegal construction is raw and brutal, and everything in this
aggressive wasteland moves - or not - on the whim of a surly Jewish
soldier. A sprawling, as-far-as-the eye-can-see wasteland –
bulldozed, earth-moved, dug-up, demolished, destroyed (add all the
other words of destruction you can think of and it will not be too
much) – through which ‘roads’ and ‘pathways’ wander at the
(ill-)will of the Israelis, whose paranoia has led to this
atrocity. All surfaces are pot-holed and covered with puddles
metres across; puddles which are surrounded by more metres of mud,
broken up by ramp after ramp, making it impossible to use any
non-powered wheeled form of transportation be it cart, wheelchair
or pushchair. And this was in the dry! Imagine a wet and windy day
– I can’t imagine the horror of it.
As you approach Kalandia from Al
Quds (Jerusalem) the devastation is apparent way before the barrier
– by the time you are a within sight of this monstrous creation,
devastation of the landscape is complete. All that once stood for
three hundred metres on either side of all approaches has been
pushed into enormous mounds containing destroyed houses, trees,
everything… And all around are the fortresses of the illegal
‘settlers’ on the hilltops.
Stretching through the mud are
long lines of resigned, but angry, people – mothers with babies and
toddlers in their arms (because they cannot use a buggy) laden with
bags, bent old people, sick people, people of all kinds unable to
travel the few miles between two of their own cities because the
Israelis are suffering from a collective delusional paranoia. Every
time people need to go from one side to the other, they walk the
long distance from the dropping-off point on one side to the taxi
minivans on the other with their heavy loads. And it is much worse,
of course, on the way back, since the suicide bombers are obviously
queuing up to enter Jerusalem!
Ramallah is covered with a blanket
of mud – all cars are muddy over their roofs and clothes are filthy
nearly up to the knee – how on earth do women manage to keep their
families clean with so much mud and so little water? Everything at
ground level in the whole land is torn-up, demolished, cleared into
piles of rubble, worn out, collapsing, never repaired – I cannot
find adequate words.
In the midst of this unprecedented
suffering, all over this road-blocked moonscape whereon every facet
of normal life is destroyed, still everyone (and I do really mean
that) takes my hand and says ‘welcome, you are very welcome’ and
smiles into my eyes. Tears flow then too.
Well, this is my experience of
crossing Kalandia into Ramallah. At 2.00 am January 1st
we came back from the party in Ramallah. We were about 40
internationals led by an Italian Minister and, although the
checkpoint was closed, the Israeli soldiers pretended not to see us
as we walked through!! Quite a diplomatic incident, I feel. Even
these thugs seemed to realize that, on balance, we were unlikely to
be carrying bombs. We walked for an hour and then a minibus came
along and took us load by load – I was luckily in the first!
Facing yet another checkpoint nearer to Al Quds, four pasty,
pimply-faced, ‘lager louts’ stood before us with their drooping,
unlit cigarettes. We had with us a Palestinian girl with no
papers. They stupidly neglected to check the NUMBER of EU
passports; so, realizing they couldn’t hold the Internationals for
anything (other than being alive – an idea which obviously annoys
them a lot), the girl passed through undetected.
When I saw the approach to
Kalandia, the infamous checkpoint itself and the unbelievably
damaged road to Ramallah, I understood how the Allied troops must
have felt when they entered the camps in 1945 – disbelief, sorrow,
anger, nausea, and outrage - “how can this have happened, be
allowed to happen?’
Well, “How can this be allowed to
happen here? How is it still like this after 55 years in
Palestine?”
PEACE When the Jews talk
of peace they do not mean the same thing that the Palestinians do.
Israelis simply mean that they wish to keep what they have taken
(the West Bank, the Golan, the Gaza Strip, and control of 3.5
million Palestinian lives), unimpeded by International Laws and
customs, and with no Palestinian able to enter or permitted to live
in Israel.
Palestinians mean that they want
to be free from the illegal occupation. They want the Jews to return
to the 1967 borders with no exceptions, they want the illegal
occupants of the settlements to leave their tiny, precious land,
they want the settlements dismantled, every one. They want no more
murders of their citizens, no more abductions, no more bombs dropped
into apartment blocks from US made F-16 strike aircraft, no more
missiles fired into residential areas from helicopter gunships (so
insensitively named ‘Apache’), no more wholesale house demolitions
by giant Caterpillar bulldozers, no more shelling from tanks such as
are used in full scale war against an armed enemy, no more mass
arrests and disappearances, no more deportation of whole families,
no more school, hospital, road and neighbourhood closures, no more
trenches in front of their universities, no more Bantustans, no more
electrified razor wire on their land – there has to be much more but
you get the picture.
So the Israelis will say “Look how
much the Palestinians are asking for – we cannot be expected to be
that generous – what will they give us?” Difficult since they don’t
have anything Israeli! GENEROUS, what an outrage!! Of course the
Jews will almost certainly overlook the gift that the Palestinians
wish to give them – a peaceful future, living side by side in two
sovereign states! Precisely what Israel doesn’t want anyway
