Qalandiya
About the (nature of) apparatus of oppression:
Near the Qalandiya refugee camp an acquaintance of mine from the camp told me that three weeks and some days ago a Shabaq (Israeli secret services) intelligence officer named Daoud announced that those from Qalandiya refugee camp who are blacklisted (prevented by the Shabaq or police from entering Israel) who wish to revoke their blacklisting (who doesn’t?) are to report to the DCO offices at the checkpoint.
Daoud also added that the Shabaq people know that they, the guys from Qalandiya, are good guys and the Shabaq really wants to help them.
Whenever I hear that the Shabaq wants to help someone I get suspicious and anxious.
It is highly likely that they too, the guys from Qalandiya, got suspicious and anxious, but their lives – without a crumb of hope – are no lives at all. So they came, the man said, they turned up the next morning, crowds of them, maybe a thousand.
They were registered, their phone numbers were written down, and were promised an answer within two weeks.
It’s been three weeks now and some days. The Shabaq never called. Nor did Daoud.
What I learned from a friend living in Yatta (Palestinian town in the South Hebron Hills) who heard this from me was that this is precisely what the Shabaq did in Hebron. Same Shabaq, same Daoud.
***
When all the ill patients from Gaza and their accompaniers were already sitting in their transport vehicle and the Civil Administration
man had already handed the Palestinian coordinator from Gaza the whole pack of IDs and permits, like someone getting cleared of a pack of people, I turned to him:
-“May I ask you something?”
-“Yes.”
-“Do you also give these ill people something to eat or drink as they wait for hours in front of your offices?”
As if struck by lightning, the man turned his back and walked away.
-“I was speaking to you, not to your back.”
-“You should address this question to the public inquiries department”, he muttered and was swallowed in the dark inside.
-“Bastards, said a man who witnessed this pseudo-conversation. “They give nothing. Nothing since morning. Nothing.”