These posts are from a Brighton based activist spending April in occupied Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement, a network of international activists set up to support Palestinian non violent resistance agaisnst Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. In these posts I will be writing short accounts of aspects of the occupation and resistance.
Last week I returned to occupied Palestine after three years being away. I thought I'd paid as much attention as possible to the situation here but I still wasn't quite prepared for the twisted nightmare that Palestine is being transformed into.
Yesterday I caught my first glimpse of the new Qalandia checkpoint, the main crossing between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Three years ago the crossing was a comparatively crude series of road blocks manned by IDF soldiers. It was an oppressive place where you often found huge queues of Palestinians waiting at the whim of the soldiers and people being detained for hours without reason.
Today Qalandia is a huge monstrosity of tunnels and turnstiles which Palestinians call the 'chicken run'. People without permits are forced to leave their cars on either side and walk through what looks like, and is intended to look like an international border terminal. Palestinians passing through the checkpoint no longer see the soldiers manning the checkpoint face to face but hear them barking orders through loudspeakers and squint at them through glass panels. The 'chicken run' terminal is framed by concrete watchtowers, reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the apartheid wall on either side.
Qalandia is one of many checkpoints which have been converted into these more permanent terminals controlling access into the banthustans of the West Bank. Similar boundaries are being constructed in Bethlehem and Tulkarem. Israel's Apartheid wall has split the West Bank into three non contiguous bantustans separated from each other by walls, fences, terminals and roadblocks. Israel's aim is to annex as much land as possible, including the land between the wall and the 1967 green line, while creating permanent ghettos for the Palestinian population.
The Palestinians and their supporters have always said that the wall was not about Israeli security but apartheid and annexation. The 'chicken run' is another indication that they are right.
The Wall Must Fall
Yesterday I caught my first glimpse of the new Qalandia checkpoint, the main crossing between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Three years ago the crossing was a comparatively crude series of road blocks manned by IDF soldiers. It was an oppressive place where you often found huge queues of Palestinians waiting at the whim of the soldiers and people being detained for hours without reason.
Today Qalandia is a huge monstrosity of tunnels and turnstiles which Palestinians call the 'chicken run'. People without permits are forced to leave their cars on either side and walk through what looks like, and is intended to look like an international border terminal. Palestinians passing through the checkpoint no longer see the soldiers manning the checkpoint face to face but hear them barking orders through loudspeakers and squint at them through glass panels. The 'chicken run' terminal is framed by concrete watchtowers, reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the apartheid wall on either side.
Qalandia is one of many checkpoints which have been converted into these more permanent terminals controlling access into the banthustans of the West Bank. Similar boundaries are being constructed in Bethlehem and Tulkarem. Israel's Apartheid wall has split the West Bank into three non contiguous bantustans separated from each other by walls, fences, terminals and roadblocks. Israel's aim is to annex as much land as possible, including the land between the wall and the 1967 green line, while creating permanent ghettos for the Palestinian population.
The Palestinians and their supporters have always said that the wall was not about Israeli security but apartheid and annexation. The 'chicken run' is another indication that they are right.
The Wall Must Fall
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