Qalandiya - a new decoration to an old madness

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Observers: 
Tamar Fleishman
Feb-24-2019
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Afternoon
מסך ענק מקרין את הנעשה באולם, במחסום המשודרג.

A Brand New Set for an Old Insane Play

The pedestrian checkpoint at Qalandiya has been renovated and was launched in glory.

The entrance is a labyrinth of winding paths separated from each other by perforated partitions, leading to a hall where muzack is heard over loudspeakers, and above the heads of the assembled, on a giant screen, the goings-on inside are projected.

לבירינט הכניסה למחסום המשודרג

The man standing ahead of me in line turned his head and said to me: It is awful.

And the soldiers? Stood facing us, glowing like bridegrooms.

But even if tons of makeup are smeared on a rotten face, these will not make it good-looking or right or just.

Because the checkpoint is not its physical structure. It is not the time it takes to cross. The checkpoint is not the soldiers’ courtesy or lack of it.

The checkpoint is not matter. The checkpoint is essence. Control. Oppression. Castration of the spirit. As for the rest – go figure...

Further on, just a few steps away, is the DCO office. But to reach it one must climb up and down two staircases.

It was about 3 p.m., and as in a bad film that repeats itself, four women – or rather six – with two of them recovering from childbirth and carrying their babies, and one not yet recovered from cardiac surgery and accompanied by a younger woman, perhaps her daughter. Perhaps her sister. They all came from hospital in Hebron and were on their way home. To the Gaza Strip.

The usual departure time of the designated transport to Gaza leaves between 3 and 4 p.m. That day it already left at 1:30 p.m.

What about the women and babies? –“Nothing to do about it. They should come tomorrow.”

From experience we know that trying to persuade the soldiers, appeal to their humanity, is all in vain.

After they mourned and cried and sighed and realized they were not to spend that night at home, they resumed their way back to the West Bank.

Each woman who had just given birth held her babyinfo-icon in one hand and carried her bags in the other, the accompanier of the post-surgical woman – her daughter or sister – carried the bags of the woman who had a very hard time walking and breathed heavily. And I  helped her along.

This is not a repeat projection of the same film, because even if the place is the same, the procedures are the same, and even the circumstances are the same – every person is a world unto themselves, to each their troubles, to each their suffering.

Of all the photos I took of the women and babies, I chose to show this one because there is something very touching in the baby’s eyes, and was something very touching in his mother’s.

תינוק במחסום קלנדיה בדרך מבית החולים בחברון לביתו בעזה