Qalandiya - a sad, tense quiet of closure
A sad, tense quiet of closure
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Only holders of blue – Jerusalem resident – IDs were allowed to cross from the West Bank into Jerusalem.
The transit permits are not valid during closure.
From Jerusalem to the West Bank traffic flows freely, no inspection, no curfew, no limitations. As in any other part of life – there’s no symmetry between here and there.
There is something terrifying in the forced disappearance of so many people.
The echoes of the girl-soldier killed at the Shu’afat Checkpoint hovered over the whole essence of this place, with feelings of dread on both sides.
- Ahmad said: She was shot because of the colonists (Ahmad calls them conists and I don’t correct his or anyone’s Hebrew). It’s all because of the conistsl We want peace but they steal our lands, enter our Al Aqsa Mosque and kill us. The guy who killed the soldier, he saw them beating up a girl at Al Aqsa, so he came to the checkpoint and fired.
- Abdallah said: What we want is to live, just to live.
As Albert Memmi writes:
“The country paces itself according to the colonizer’s holidays, even the religious ones, and not by those of the colonized: the weekly day of rest is that of the colonizing state, its flag is the one flying over memorial sites, its language is the one enabling social communication: even its garb, accent, customs are all meant to be dictated to and imitated by the colonized…”
Being carried from one ambulance to the other by the medical staff member, her head and hands dropped - one would think the guy was carrying a rag doll.
Only when she was laid on the stretcher on which she was placed in the ambulance that came to take her from Jerusalem, with her whole body stretched out, did it become obvious that here was a very ill girl who does not respond to her surroundings.
She is one year old, said her mother who would not move away from her daughter.
She has a case of serious pneumonia, said the paramedic.
No doubt the infant needed to get to hospital as quickly as possible. But she didn’t.
True, she was not delayed or harassed. “Only” orders were followed, and procedures – and the orders and procedures are the manifestations of policy and not to be weighed by the local echelons that are themselves the constant inspection and harassment.