Jaba (Lil), Qalandiya, Sun 22.1.12, Afternoon

Share:
Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Email
Observers: 
Tamar Fleishman (reporting)
Jan-22-2012
|
Afternoon

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya checkpoint:
A witness told me about a man who walked into the vehicle checkpoint, soldiers shouted at him from afar to stop, the man didn't stop, he waved an axe above his head and kept walking. Fires were shot in the air. The man kept walking. They shot at him. They hit his leg, he fell.
"It was a mess". The witness said: "Tonnes of soldiers came. They closed the checkpoint for about half an hour. The poor man was done for. He must have wanted to die, now he will go to prison…".

The separation forced upon the Palestinians of the West Bank from their relatives in the Gaza Strip prevents them from sharing the good and the bad.
Five young men arrived at the Palestinian side of the checkpoint to pay their last respect to a relative from Gaza who hadn't survived the operation he went through in Nablus.
Each one entered separately the back side of the Palestinian ambulance where the body of the deceased was, they each took a couple of minutes to be alone with the dead man, and when they came out their faces were soaking wet from tears.
Only then, after the last one got out, the ambulance crosse

d the checkpoint and the body of the deceased was transferred into the Israeli ambulance that was waiting to taken to burial in his home town.

Jaba checkpoint:

The rain that was diluted by ice flacks and the temperatures that dropped near to zero degrees drove the soldiers away to their posts. For the first time in years there were no rifle barrels pointing at human beings and no one looking out for the settlers' safety.