Qalandiya - in Palestine, people want to be older so they can to go to Al Aqsa Mosque
All over the world people want to be younger. Only here, in Palestine, people want to be older so they would be allowed to go to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque…”
Again the Israeli army and police have acted like a well-oiled, skillful machine, and once again the treatment of tens of thousands of Palestinians who reached the contact points between armed personnel and Palestinians – women, men, the elderly, children – was inhuman.
Everthing rolling by the book, obeying the orders – hearts seem to have been stored away, paralyzed the veins of mercy.
Palestinians streamed from all parts of the ventral and northern West Bank, from towns, villages and refugee camps, by foot and by car – a huge wave of people at Qalandiya, crowding on the openings that were closed and opened by the armed uniform wearers. Those knocking at the gates
were armed only with their sole wish – to reach the prayer at Al Aqsa.
There amidst the selection stations I met Dina, the bright-eyed girl (in the photo), who came out of her home at dawn in the Balata refugee camp with her family. She, her mother and sisters managed to cross the first selection and hoped for the best.
The crowding between the opening beats of the gates was such that women carried their children and babies overhead, fearing they would be suffocated.
Ramadan rules: only men over 55 are allowed through.
Why 55? Why not 53? Or 70? Why not 54 and a half? Only the rulers know.
55 was like a jackpot number, like a mantra. When the inspectors encountered a gray haired man whose 55th birthday comes 3 days from now – he was ashamedly turned back.
And the women? –“Women cross freely.”
But this “freely” is not really “free”. Women who know or do not know that they are blacklisted do not cross. Women whose distant relative once sat in jail do not cross.
Everything is thoroughly checked, everything is on the computer.
When the time ran out and the wave of women outside the walls and the closed gates thickened, thousands of mouths broke out in a huge, echoing chorus: God is great, God is great (Allahu akbar!) !
I stood facing the men’s line with a Jenin freedom theater person, a man close to 55 years of age who has not yet celebrated that birthday, and he said:
All over the world people want to be younger. Only here, in Palestine, people want to be older so they would be allowed to go to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque…”