Dorothée and I did checkpoint observation at Zatara, the big
checkpoint in this area, this afternoon
Zatara Military Check post - Kate -IWPS -Palestine Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Dorothée and I did checkpoint observation at Zatara, the big checkpoint in this area, this afternoon. It was quite a scene. We saw at least 15 ambulances go through, all pretty quickly after a cursory search. When we got there, a line of men was standing by a service. After quite a while, they were told to come forward one by one, give their ID, lift their shirts and turn around. Eventually, after this humiliating routine was done, the service was sent back. The same thing happened with the next one. About half an hour later, a service came and was let through after the IDs were checked. No one except the driver had to get out and he didn't have to lift his shirt or anything.
Zatara is not a big checkpoint like Huwarra or Qalandia. It is just a collection of cement blocks in the middle of the street, and Mariam says when she first arrived in September, there were often no soldiers there at all. Recently, however, they have put a lot more energy into it. There are always soldiers there now, they built a new lookout tower (which often doesn't have anyone in it), and there's usually a tank on the road in between the settlement of Tapuach and the village of Yasuf. It's an intersection of two major settler highways, the 60 (north-south) and the 505 (east- west). We were speculating that it may be the only checkpoint where settlers get such a firsthand look at what Palestinians go through. About 3:00 p.m., settler teens and young adults were arriving by the busload, presumably from the colleges or yeshivot in the area. All the young women and girls had on long (mostly floor-length) skirts and the men of course had kippot. Dorothée remarked that the women didn't cover their heads, and I explained that only married Orthodox women do that, unlike in Islam.
The settlers would stand along the side of the road, many of them right by where we were observing, and wait to get rides. (One of the interesting things here is that hitchhiking is done by everyone, not just young people. It's almost formal, like getting rides across the bridge in Oakland.) We wondered whether the settler kids notice, and think at all, about how free they are, and how much hassle and humiliation the Palestinians go through. We noticed, too, that no Palestinian women were coming through, and wondered if the settler girls notice that or think about what it might mean. Some day, if we continue to do this, I will try asking some of them. Today, because it was our first time doing it, we said we were only going to observe, not intervene (though of course that would have gone by the wayside if anyone had seemed about to be arrested or hurt). I didn't initiate conversations with anyone, though some of the soldiers initiated them with me.
When one of the soldiers came to talk to me (we had been there close to an hour by then), I asked him why the services had been turned back at first, and now they were being able to go through. He said, "We don't decide. We get the orders." He said at first they were told no cabs were allowed to go through. (I didn't think to ask then, but wondered later, then why go through the whole ritual of checking everybody?) Then they were told they could go on this road but not that road (pointing). Now, he said, they can go on any road as long as they're not going to Nablus. Karin suggests that it might be their officers screwing with them.
More and more military vehicles were arriving. There were at least 50 jeeps that passed through, some stayed for a while, some didn't. Then the police came. They were very interested in a car with yellow plates that was held there for about half an hour. It had already been thoroughly searched, including under the hood, before the police came. They walked around it and talked to the men in it and talked on their radios, but eventually it left; we weren't sure if it had to go back where it came from or was allowed through.
One of the soldiers came over to me and said he wanted to show me something. He shook two little BBs out of his wallet, saying something about four suicide belts they had found in cars there in the last three months. I wasn't sure what the connection was; he talked about pounds of C4, and what he was showing me didn't really look like anything that you'd put in a bomb, but what do I know? He said he had the name and ID number of someone who was carrying explosives today. I asked if he didn't have a picture. "No, our intelligence is good, but not that good." He said he was a student, not an ideologue, with nothing against Palestinians who are among his friends. I said, "But you do have a choice." We talked a little about the "vicious cycle," and he said he agreed, but what can you do? "I'm a soldier, this is my job." I'm tired of hearing that. I did notice, however, that he said "Nablus" and not "Shechem," the old biblical name which most Israelis insist on using.
Mariam leaves tomorrow and I'll really miss her. It's funny, she said just what I predicted before I left, "At the beginning, three months seemed like such a long time, but I'm just getting used to being here." She said she'd love to go home for three weeks to visit, and then come back. She's lucky, though, because she will be back before too long; her husband has taken a job in Ramallah (right now they live in Canada).
Kate Raphael IWPS Palestine katrap@mindspring.com (+972) (0)9-251-6644 (house) (+972) (0)67-387-806 (mobile)
|