Qalandiya

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Place: 
Observers: 
Tamar Fleishman; Translator: Tal H.
Mar-5-2017
|
Afternoon

 

Qalandiya Checkpoint is a bloody checkpoint.

A boy selling tissue paper. Qalandiya. Photographer: Tamar Fleishman. March 5, 2017
A child offering tissue paper for sale

One shot turned the beggar-woman into a terrorist.

Day after day, for years, the woman used to sit on the concrete slab at the entrance of the checkpoint (next to which are placed the tissue packets sold by the child) and held her hand out for alms.

On Monday, February 27, 2017, the soldiers shot her in the leg and wounded her.

She was not going anywhere, nor approaching the soldiers’ post – said an eye-witness who, with another young man, dragged her back and made sure she was sent for medical care.

The old woman was not only not going anywhere, she could hardly walk because of being overweight and diabetic.

But the facts didn’t keep the army spokesperson from announcing that:

When she did not respond to the security officials warning her to halt, warning shots were fired in the air, and she did not respond to that, she was shot in the leg.”

And also: ”At Qalandiya Checkpoint, a woman terrorist was neutralized, apparently after an attempted stabbing.”

Since Monday the old beggar-woman is no longer sitting on the concrete slab at the entrance to the checkpoint, nor holding her hand out for alms.

  • Thanks to Yael Arava who forwarded me the army spokesperson’s releases from her important archive.

The horror of it was not the half-hour that passed between the moment the ambulance from the West Bank carrying the patient reached the checkpoint and the moment the East Jerusalem ambulance left with the patient to continue her journey.

The horror was not even the fact that the back-to-back procedure was carried out under so many pointed rifles. Nor even the fact that the patient’s mother, instead of standing next to her daughter, holding her hand and stroking her head, was required to move away from her and exhibit the contents of the bags she brought along for both of them.

The horror was the blood-curdling scream of the patient as she was moved between the two stretchers.

She was sent to Muqassad Hospital (East Jerusalem) because of the exacerbation of her pressure sores caused by a long period in bed, so that the slightest movement was like a blow to raw flesh.

At least this, the horrific suffering caused by this superfluous transfer between stretchers at the checkpoint, she could have been spared had the authorities allowed the West Bank ambulances to drive through directly to East Jerusalem.

Ambulance. Back to back procedure. Qalandiya. Photographer: Tamar Fleishman. March 5, 2017
אמבולנס. נוהל גב אל גב
Checking bags. Qalandiya. Photographer: Tamar Fleishman. March 5, 2017
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