Qalandiya

Perhaps what they want is after all حرية.

It is disgusting and nauseam how all this has been systematized.

So arranged, and so much according to what the authorities wanted and determined and to what the soldiers and policemen and security officers carried out, that it was actually depressing.

Because when things are so accurate and organized and tight, the judgment is wiped out and the human factor disappears and what remains are robots who carry out orders. Even when they are courteous they are nothings but robots.

Because when there are no cracks light has no means of penetrating.

And so, when the rules of this day say that women have to go from here and men from there – then the women can pass only here and the men only there. And when the humanitarian exception rules that even sick and crippled men can pass where the women pass, but only if they are in a wheel chair, then the cardiac patient who has no walking problems but fears the crowding and congestion at the men's gate, is obliged to sit in a wheelchair and be pushed to the other side. And when men are forbidden to walk on the women's course, the invalids are obliged to part from masculine escorts. Because: "nothing can be done, these are the regulations".

·       The hundred square meters at the entrance to the CP,  the area which serves as a bustling parking space during the rest of the year, have turned into a sterile area of grey concrete, bare and silent, and people are directed mercilessly only to its margins.

·       Streams of people flowed to the CP and the order was exemplary.

   Years of oppression have marked the Palestinians.

It was rare to see a Palestinian rebelling or openly and loudly insisting on his right not to be constrained in the fetters of regulations.

·       And with all this there was also one uplifting fact:

The Palestinian policemen were not there and did not aid in the sifting, selection and guidance as in former years.

Moreover, the effort which was invested by the authorities in creating a display of excessive facilitations because of the month of Ramadan was thwarted, according to the Activities Coordinator in the territories Major General Yoav Poly Mordehai, by the Palestinian Authority, who refused to coordinate with the civil administration the promotion of the transportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians to the El-Aktza mosque. This coordination necessitated that the Palestinian Policemen perform the security check and the observance of the age limitation of the people entering the boundary of Jerusalem.

Or, as Mahmud El-Habash, the advisor of the Palestinian president, said in response to the question of the Ha-Aretz newspaper in this matter: "Israel continue to conduct itself in this issue like a master who fixes all the conditions".

And the answer to the border policeman, the border policeman too, who complained about the lack of cooperation of the Palestinian Authority and asked:

"What do they want after all? – don't they want that the people should pass?"

Perhaps what they want, in the end is حرية (huriya) – freedom.