The South Hebron Hills is a pretty cruisey placement. We have a lot to do, but a lot of freedom in when and how to do it. The exception is checkpoint duty. In six of the seven EAPPI placements, we monitor checkpoints and agricultural gates in the so-called "Security Barrier" (and some not even in the barrier). We do this not only for us, but for partner organisations (including Machsom Watch, a group of Israeli women who do the same thing for the same reasons: machsomwatch.org/en) who use our statistics to make reports on the humanitarian situation. In the South Hebron Hills, we monitor the Meitar checkpoint Sundays and Thursdays from 4am-7am. There are many, many problems with the Wall, but that is a subject for another post. This post will concentrate on the checkpoint itself. Incidentally, 'machsom' means 'checkpoint' in both Arabic and Hebrew.
My day begins about 3am, when we (always pairs) get up to wake our driver. I get dressed in a sleepy haze, wash my face and drink a glass of water. The driver arrives about 3.20, and the journey to Meitar takes anywhere from 20-30 minutes, depending on whether we need to buy petrol and how crazy our driver is prepared to speed that day. When we get to the checkpoint, we get a coffee at the market:
and take up our position in a space from which we can (sort of) see the three things that interest us: how many x-ray machines inside the checkpoint are operating at any one time, how many people pass through the corridor, and what the queue looks like both in terms of length and conditions. We are also in line to speak with people turned back from the checkpoint: Israel sometimes does this fairly arbitrarily, and it's important to keep track.
Meitar is one of the friendliest checkpoints in the West Bank. Although it's sneakily inside the 1948 Armistice Line, stealing a few acres of land from the Palestinians, it's practically a legitimate border crossing compared to one such as Checkpoint 300 in Bethlehem. The red circles indicate car parks: Palestinian-plated cars are forbidden from entering Israel. (This is subject of a future post, When Green Means Stop.) You can only get a permit to enter Israel by having a job, so people carpool to the crossing and then employers send cars to pick them up.
The green circle in the middle is the actual pedestrian crossing point; it's like a figure-8 with a shed for a queue, a short connecting corridor and then a shed for the three x-ray lines. Being a security installation, the GoogleMaps image is pretty blurry. (Something else you might notice is this checkpoint is a one-way valve. Israel is not at all concerned about what goes into the West Bank, only what comes out. The entire infrastructure of the checkpoint is facing one way, with the other direction quite simply a boom gate which sometimes is literally left up so the staff don't have to put it up and down all the time.)
The first point of interest is the number of gates open. This indicates the speed with which Palestinians can cross. If there's a large queue and only one gate, that would be a reason to call the Humanitarian Hotline, but it happens here rarely.
The next important thing is to count the raw numbers going through: men, women and children (though usually almost all men; they have jobs like olive harvester and construction labourer.) On a typical Sunday, over 3,000 people pass through over the 3 hours. The bit you can see it open is the sit gate for pedestrians returning to Palestine. It occasionally brings people who have attempted to enter Israel and been turned back. Our position here gives us a chance to speak with them about their problem.
If there is a prison visit planned, the Palestinian Red Crescent will bring several buses of women and children to drive to Israeli prisons where their relatives are incarcerated. These 'humanitarian visas' are valid from 7am, so while they rock up at 6.30, they cannot cross till after we've left. But the Red Crescent keeps an eye on that.
We aim to arrive before 4am, and check how many people are already waiting. Often it's none [see picture above]. A queue is a sign that people have no faith in an easy crossing, but Meitar is fairly reliable. If the gate is not open by 4.10am, we call the Humanitarian Hotline, actually an office in the headquarters of the Israeli Defence Force in Beit El, an illegal Settlement near Ramallah, requesting that they look into it. We keep calling every five minutes until it is opened. I've only had to call a couple of times, and it was opened almost immediately afterwards.
At least sometimes, we attempt to monitor how long the 30m journey from the queue in Palestine to a waiting minibus in Israel takes. (A rare opportunity to say "let's synchronise watches!") One of us walks through the vehicle checkpoint [that's the grey shed just above the "60" across the road heading south in the picture at the top of this post] having our vests x-rayed and papers checked, and then walks back towards the pedestrian exit on the Israeli side. Once in place, we call our partner and they begin handing out small cards with the time written on them. Having got through the checkpoint, people hand the card to the waiting partner, who notes the time.
At Meitar, this is typically 10-30 minutes. In other places it can be over an hour. The procedure can be difficult, however, as many Palestinians are afraid the security staff will see them co-operating with us and make it more difficult to get through. More than once cards are not returned.
At 7, we wake our driver (sometimes with a coffee from the stalls) and head back to Yatta for a nap before an afternoon of drinking tea in the villages. Yup. Life is pretty cruisey in Yatta. I like it.
If you're interested in reading about some of the other, less pleasant checkpoints on offer, I recommend some of my colleagues' blogs:
http://kerynbanks.tumblr.com/post/34173720739/checkpoints
http://morgenerijayyous.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/handler-det-egentlig-om-sikkerhet/
http://vyeolywedruiwe.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/goeiemore-bethlehem/
http://www.dombook.blogspot.co.il/2012/10/morning-at-qalandia-checkpoint.html
http://amosaicforpeace.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/qalandiya-today/
I work for the National Council of Churches as an Ecumenical Accompanier serving on the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The views contained herein are personal to me and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or the WCC. If you would like to publish the information contained here (including posting on a website), or distribute it further, please first contact Debra Porter ([email protected]) or the EAPPI Communications Officer ([email protected]) for permission. Thank you.