Qalandiya - The gate designated for wheelchairs would not open
At Qalandiya Checkpoint time is not a permanent value.
At Qalandiya Checkpoint freedom is not a permanent value.
At Qalandiya Checkpoint personal space is not a permanent value.
At Qalandiya Checkpoint, time, freedom and personal space depend on official procedures, orders and whim.
Because ill patients from Gaza returning home after treatment and hospitalization in the West Bank or East Jerusalem are familiar with how this place operates they arrive at the DCO offices as early as they can, deposit their documents with the Civil Administration
representatives and wait until the afternoon, until they are permitted to exit and go home.
The ill and disabled sit for long hours waiting, without having any food. A kind of imposed quarantine.
On this day, only at 4:30 PM did a Civil Administration official lead the group of those returning to Gaza outside the checkpoint compound, but the gate designated for wheelchairs would not open. “It’s been out of order for two weeks now”, said one who knew.
A father got stuck there while leading his child - who suffers from cerebral palsy – in a pram because they have no money for a wheelchair nor for medication. An elderly woman in a wheelchair got stuck there too, as did a man moving with a walker.
Repeated attempts to open the locked gate did not succeed and the delay was lifted only when the Civil Administration person came to his senses and led the movement impaired patients by another route.
During the hour and a half I waited for the patients to arrive, two back-to-back procedures took place: because of “renovations” the space where patients from the West Bank to Jerusalem and back were transferred from one ambulance to another, for months now both ambulances must maneuver in order to arrive and face each other between the two traffic lanes at the center of the vehicle checkpoint, a place where pedestrians (such as I) are strictly forbidden to reach. But on that day the team operating the vehicle checkpoint was fairly people-friendly and I managed to come in contact and talk with the medical teams.
- A man was transported from Jerusalem to Ramallah after undergoing abdominal surgery. The post-surgery treatment and recovery will take place in a Ramallah hospital, where he will be visited by his family, un-prevented from staying by him as he and they please.
- A man who suffered a cardiac attack was transported from Ramallah to Jerusalem, connected to oxygen and accompanied by a physician. “He also has brain cancer”, said the ambulance driver. At Muqassad Hospital (East Jerusalem) he will be treated, perhaps his condition will improve, but what about his isolation and distance from his family there?
