Qalandiya
The conduct of the Border Police force that took over the entrance of the checkpoint through which the West Bank is reached was not exceptional. Nothing outstanding happened as the BPmen got into buses headed for Jerusalem and conducted a repeat inspection of people who had been inspected at the checkpoint 203 minutes earlier, and delayed them longer. The blocking of their way and the demand to produce IDs and permits was no exception, not even the fact that they created two categories, those who came out of their inspection alright: “you can proceed”, and those who needed deeper inquiry: “you stand here.”
Even after an hour and a quarter of activity, when they managed to hunt a young man returning from work who had “only “ an ID because his work permit was no longer valid and he had not yet received his new one, even then, when they detained him and checked his bag and body-searched him, they were not violent. They were doing what they do because this is what must be done. And when they reported him on radio and were ordered to take him for interrogation to Atarot base, and two of them led him between them, even then they were neither abrasive nor rough. They were efficient. After a while, when I drove away and passed by them and saw the Palestinian with his hands crossed in front of his body and thought I was seeing him shackled but wasn’t sure, and didn’t know whether he was taken to the Atarot police station or to the Atarot Shabak (security services) station, even then nothing about the goings-on was exceptional, neither in the incident nor in their conduct, neither in the his being detained nor in his arrest, neither in the cuffs that shackled or didn’t shackle his hands, not even in the moment that so resembled ‘selection’ – “you stand here” and “you can proceed”.
What was exceptional were the shivers I had down my spine. It’s the date (Eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day) and my own private connection to what goes on here and what happened there.