Qalandiya
Because of the official procedures.
Why must a cancer patient on his way from hospital in Ramallah to Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem change ambulances at Qalandiya Checkpoint?
Because of the official procedures.
Why are ambulances of the Red Crescent prohibited from traveling to the Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem?
Because of the official procedures.
Why must any patient in any condition, gender, or age (a baby
, an old man, a woman, a critically wounded person, even a dying one) obtain a permit from the Israeli GSS (general Security Services) in order to reach a hospital?
Because of the official procedures.
As though official procedures descended from heaven, and are not the outcome of an idea and plan perpetrated by a human brain.
Happy Simchat Torah! (the holiday marking the completion and re-beginning of reading the Torah)
Closure follows closure.
The month of Jewish holidays (Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah) is a month of closures for Palestinians.
The near complete absence of people at the checkpoint makes it all the more exposed.
This is absence brings to the foreground under-currents that protrude like veins on the skin of an aging body that consumes itself.