Qalandiya - Fourth Ramadan Friday

‘Take photos!’ young men shouted at me, who had been on their way to prayer at the Al Aqsa Mosque and were chased away.

‘Take photos!’ said women, crowding against each other on the other side of the compound.

I took pictures of both as well as of the women who appeared on my way to Qalandiya like a mirage on this foggy, smoggy morning.

The last Ramadan Friday seemed to assemble in it all Fridays in view of the growing essence and depth of controlling another people, and the effects of such control on Palestinian society as a whole, and its interiorization by the individual in particular.

I grasped the extent of the occupation horrors’ imprint in people’s minds when I suggested to a friend who stood in the crowded waiting lines to sneak through the alternative shortcut where she would pass in a jiffy. The woman shook her head, saying: ‘If they see me, they’ll shoot in in the head’.

The last Ramadan Friday seemed a sequel of the Ramadan Fridays prior to the pandemic, when people swarmed to the holy sites from every possible way, direction and opening.

Every encounter with the armed forces dominating the area was held in Orwellian terms.

For in a state of no freedom and no human rights, only George Orwell’s words could explain a phrase such as the one yelled at the hundreds crowding at the openings: “We are closing, for there’s crowding inside and we are concerned with your health”.

How can one explain “sterile ground” as the forces call it - an area that has nothing in common with hygiene and is simply a space where no unarmed person is entitled to enter – other than in Orwellian terms?

Or when the answer to the question why men are separated from women is that ‘We respect their tradition’?

All these serve as holiday greetings of the ruler to his subjects.

What brightened my day, again, were the ‘first aid’ youngsters who, except for helping the elderly and the disabled, stood high on the concrete blocs between the traffic lanes, and ‘fished out’ children and babies crushed in the line, held them near and fast until the mother made way and came to pick them up.

As I was the only Jewish person there not holding a weapon in the space between the refugee camp and the rifles, a youngster whose back showed the word ‘USHER’ yelled: ‘There are only Arabs here, not Jews! You are an Arab!!’ accompanying his words with a great smile of acceptance and partnership.