Chapter Two: Qalandia Checkpoint.

We were soon going to experience the humiliations people go through.

Israel, not so fond of the huge wave of people coming to Jerusalem described in the preloge, and do their best to put obstacles for the peoples wanting to exercise their religious belief, in the form of closed checkpoints, a huge number of soldiers in front of the entrances and a literally random separation of those allowed through and those who are turned back. The general rule is no access for people under and over a certain age. When we asked one soldier he said no one under 50, but when we finally started flashing our passports, two of them even being American, we were let through the first stage almost immediately. But we still aren’t even there in the story. First we had to go from one roadblock which was closed to another around 50 meters further down the street.

To my great disappointment my camera was out of batteries so I can not illustrate this visually, so all I can give is a more detailed description. Thus, it is one way through the apartheid wall, known as the Qalandia checkpoint (next to the Qalandia refugee camp by the way). The actual checkpoint is an armoured watch tower, and a small "terminal", where all the control occurs. On a normal day, all (except foreigners and others holding blue id-cards) have to get off their taxis/buses on the Palestinian side of the checkpoint and enter the terminal for inspection, before they come out the Israeli controlled side and "retrieve" their buses on the other side to continue the travel. The road itself is blocked off with a normal barrier where soldiers check any private cars and the remaining passengers on buses. But today the entire area in front of Qalandia checkpoint was blocked off, on the Palestinian side, and two roadblocks 100 m. away from the checkpoint with a distance of 50 m. between them were set up as a pre-check to keep out the majority of the people.

Now, for some reason one of the occasional roadblocks was closed, and we had to move to the other, as did hundreds of others. When we got there we were shocked by the whole situation, and for the first few minutes we just stood there behind the other civilians and tried to grasp the logic. The soldiers were pushing people further and further behind, away from the pre-checkpoint, making a new point of gathering some meters away, as people desperately tried to show the soldiers their id-cards and their permissions to them. To get to Jerusalem, as a Palestinian, you need to hold a blue id-card in the first place. Some years ago Israel made a decision of not letting any random person in to Jerusalem and issued the blue id-cards. They were given to those who were in Jerusalem at that actual time. Those who were outside, for example, in connection with their studies or anything else, were not. For example students that are actually from Jerusalem, but were living outside Jerusalem at that particular time, when the blue cards were issued, still hold green cards, and no longer have the permission to travel to Jerusalem, their actual homes and families. It is possible to apply for explicit permission to travel to Jerusalem, but it is a long process, and seldom issued for any lengthy period of time.

So, there they were. Old people and young, presenting their id-cards in vain to the soldiers who just kept pushing them further and further back. Even I was pushed, but that’s just a digression. There were blue id-cards, green id-cards with special permission, and it was the id-card (magnetized cards) that shows that you have a working permit in Israel and there were even orange id-cards. The orange ones are unknown to me, but supposedly they are of old date. Once in a while the soldiers let some through, so we paved our way to the soldiers who did let people through. Keep in mind, through to the pre-checkpoint in front of the checkpoint.

Where are you going? The soldier asked us. The answer was pretty obvious. No, it is not possible. Not even for tourists? No, no one under 50, was the answer but since we were tourists we were told to wait a bit. Another soldier who continued to monitor us wondered why we didn’t take the usual route to Jerusalem. We wondered what (the hell) that was. Well, the road, from Tel Aviv. It is difficult to say anything back when you’re looking at the business end of an M16 assault rifle, plus Qalandia is a significant number of km. away from Tel Aviv, on the opposite side of Jerusalem. Anyway, the end of this was that my American friends got the permission to continue, and eventually even me, when I managed to point out that I was with them and was Norwegian. Norg? Cool. Well, up to the roadblock, Passport control, and so on through the open area that is quarantined and emptied behind the sporadic roadblock and moved on to Qalandia. At this emptied area, there were gathered a large amount of soldiers, and it was amazing to see this huge amount of firepower gathered. They were just sitting there, waiting for an eventuality that hopefully never occurred. A funny story was when some soldiers made a deal trading his tear gas cans for a pack of cigarettes, but we were asked to hurry up to the “terminal”.

Qalandia checkpoint is like any other checkpoint around the West Bank, sad, cold and difficult to describe with words. Israel wants to call it "terminals” to give it a better sound, but in reality it is prison-like corridors with blocks and fences. Here, briefly explained, people stay in queues in a, for lack of a better word, cattle shoot with fences on both sides for quite some while, before coming to a metal spin-doors, which you pass one by one, before finally coming to the metal detector and all that goes with that. A soldier in a cabin (one’s imagination plays games with you as you see a cabin reinforced with inches of ballistic glass reinforced with inch and a half industrial bolts, and think that they literally expect someone to blow themselves up which while in the narrow steal barred corridors of the shoot makes you wonder if you will survive) making people walk back and forth through the metal detector because it keeps beeping, and so on. But before you get that far, you’ve been in a queue and fought your way into the cattle shoot that leads you to the metal spin-doors. As previously told, people have been around for several hours (we heard people talking about 2 and even three hours among them). First just to get into the “terminal”, then to get into the cattle shoot, so obviously there is a lot of frustration, anger and despair in the air. People are shouting, yelling and pushing in order to move the line. Many unfortunate people, come through the spin-door, and just before the metal detector are asked to go back outside. It happened to a group ahead of us, but again of unknown causes. We are all well monitored by police and soldiers and waved us further all the time… And not surprisingly there were no others the same age as us around.

The roadblocks and the checkpoint can hardly be called an obstacle for us internationals by the people still waiting outside, it still took us over one hour to get across the checkpoint. But I was on my way to the holy al-Aqsa, and hundreds were still waiting at Qalandia.