The extensive documentation compiled by both local and
international human rights and humanitarian organizations over the
six years of the al-Aqsa intifada depicts a general picture of the
restrictive impact of checkpoints on Palestinians in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories (OPT). Checkpoints impede the travel of
Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to East
Jerusalem, from Gaza to the West Bank and vice versa, and from the
West Bank and Gaza to the outside world. They make it extremely
difficult for Palestinians even to move from one city to another
and from one village to another within the same area or region.
Around 50 permanent and manned checkpoints, more than 600 unmanned
barriers and two international crossing points - one to Egypt and
the other to Jordan - have transformed each and every Palestinian
city, village and refugee camp into an island separate unto itself,
or, as some would say, into a large prison.
These reports also reveal the material and nonmaterial losses
caused by or associated with the checkpoints, as well as the
intimidation, the humiliation, the general harassment to which
Palestinians are subjected, and other inhuman and illegal practices
perpetrated by the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints. They
document the numbers of killings and injuries, as well as deaths
and childbirths that have occurred at checkpoints, or due to the
checkpoints. They tell of the agonizing journeys of dialysis
patients to specialized hospitals and clinics, and of the denial of
family members' or lawyers' visits to prisoners and detainees. But
what these reports cannot do is reflect or replicate the personal
experience at the checkpoints of each of the more than 3 million
Palestinians and the human rights violations of which they have
been victims over the decades of occupation.
As a measure of collective punishment explicitly banned by
international humanitarian law, checkpoints affect each and every
Palestinian in the OPT. Although never identical, their personal
experiences exhibit what are called "family resemblances": the
arduous journeys to the checkpoint(s), the long hours of waiting,
the extra financial costs of travel, the time and energy wasted,
the sweat and dust in the summer or the mud and rain in the winter,
the arguments and altercations with the soldiers, the attempts to
bypass the checkpoints by taking risky dirt roads - often by donkey
- and the thoughts and feelings that accompany and color each
journey from beginning to end.
What One Gives Up
Checkpoints have both manifest and latent implications. Manifest
implications point to the direct and indirect material and
nonmaterial losses, as well as to the personal suffering of those
who manage to cross, or attempt but fail to pass through the
checkpoints, for different purposes - work, education, medical
treatment, worship, family visits, entertainment or travel. The
latent implications, in contrast, refer to the direct and indirect
losses and to the suffering of those who give up, those who do not
even try to cross. Understandably, human rights and humanitarian
organizations give prominence in their reports to the former
category.
Because of the checkpoints and the arbitrary permit system
associated with them, most Palestinians in the OPT are more
inclined to give up moving from one location to another unless it
is absolutely essential or urgent. Giving up becomes the primary
coping mechanism. By giving up, one is spared the hazards and the
costs of a difficult and humiliating journey, but this comes at a
price:
* To decide to deliver at home with the help of a local midwife
rather than at a hospital. UN reports refer to scores of delivery
cases that have occurred at checkpoints, with a high rate of
related infant mortality.
* To curtail visits to family or friends residing in different
districts, and to forego attending weddings, funerals and other
social occasions. And thus, Palestinians are becoming less
connected.
* To give up going to the city of Jerusalem for prayer, education,
entertainment or mere sightseeing.
* To give up travel abroad, unless it is vital.
* To give up a job or a position, or even to seek one, in a
location outside one's area of residence.
* To give up studying or teaching in a college or university
outside one's area of residence.
* To give up burying family members in their hometowns and to
settle, for example, for Amman, where the person has died.
* To give up or postpone as much as possible medical treatment in a
better hospital or clinic if such treatment requires an arduous
journey to a city beyond the "infamous" checkpoint.
* To stop growing crops that need marketing in areas beyond the
checkpoint, if there is no middleman to transport them.
* To give up the pleasure of going to the sea (in Gaza or Israel),
or driving around in one's car on intercity highways to appreciate
what nature has to offer in other parts of the country.
* To be denied visits by relatives and friends from the other side
of the Green Line. Even Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem
have reduced their travel to the West Bank to absolutely essential
trips.
The list of things people give up or are ready to give up is
endless. It necessarily involves suffering and results in material
and nonmaterial losses. For this reason, very few people can afford
never to cross a checkpoint.
Impacts: Economic, Social and Psychological
Restriction on movement under all its forms - the erection of
stationary, mobile or surprise ("flying") checkpoints; curfews;
closures of areas; travel bans on certain main roads or entry into
Israel - can be considered the primary cause for the impoverishment
of the Palestinians in the OPT during the six years of the
intifada. More than 120,000 laborers have lost their jobs inside
Israel and therefore their main or only source of income.
Unemployment has reached close to one-third of the labor force; as
a result, 50% of the population now falls below the poverty line as
defined by the World Bank (US$2 per capita per day). All sectors of
the Palestinian economy have been hit hard, largely due to these
restrictions.
Restrictions on movement also carry adverse social consequences,
undermining the very fabric of Palestinian society. After years of
high-intensity conflict, Palestinian society is becoming less
robust, less cohesive and less tolerant, but more religious and
conservative. Furthermore, social interaction between the Gaza
Strip and the West Bank has become almost nonexistent; a similar
situation exists between West Bankers and the Israeli Palestinians.
The extended family and the clan have come to assume special
significance in the life of the average Palestinian, at the expense
of civil society and official public institutions. Traditional
(tribal) methods of dispute settlement have become much more
trustworthy than the ineffective courts of law.
Because of the checkpoints, Palestinian students, youths, teachers,
workers, artists and other professionals are generally confined to
their areas of residence and are denied the possibility of
intermingling with their colleagues or counterparts in other areas
of the OPT. Even marriages between Palestinians residing in
different locations have suffered a deadly blow. Thus, social
interaction and integration have been significantly damaged, and
this has been further compounded by other social problems
associated with unemployment and poverty.
Not unsurprisingly, checkpoints, and chiefly the six-year-old
siege, have had a detrimental effect on the psychological level as
well. Checkpoints haunt people's minds all the time. You cannot
make a plan, a promise, an appointment or a commitment without
taking them seriously into account - especially if the activity
requires crossing a checkpoint. Travel abroad has become a
nightmare, since it involves enduring the hardships of the costly
and complicated journey to the international crossing points and
beyond. Checkpoints have to be taken into account in wedding
arrangements, in burials and in visits to a sick parent or
relative.
On a different level, checkpoints mean that the rest of the country
with its space and landscape recedes into the distance and to the
recesses of the mind. It becomes off-limits and unreachable. Your
desire to see it is frustrated; your right to see it is
indefinitely suspended. Checkpoints lay a siege around you:
sometimes you ignore it, sometimes you repress it, but it is always
lurking there in the background. It has become part of the harsh
reality that you resent, hate and struggle to change.
Unconvincing Justifications
With the exceptions of those leading directly to Israel or dictated
by overriding military considerations, checkpoints restrict the
movement of Palestinians for the benefit of Jewish settlers who
reside illegally in the OPT. Palestinians are confined to
designated areas, and are not allowed to travel on certain roads,
or are even placed under prolonged curfews so that settlers can
commute freely and safely. In other words, Palestinians get
collectively and ruthlessly punished so that settlers can be
adequately protected and their wellbeing enhanced.
It is not easy to convince Palestinians that checkpoints and, for
that matter, the separation wall, are where they are for purely
security considerations or by military necessity. That is to say,
Palestinians have good reason to believe that checkpoints
constitute a punitive measure and are politically charged. They are
persuaded that in addition to their role in protecting Israeli
civilians, Jewish settlers and settlements, checkpoints are
intended to humiliate and intimidate them, to weaken their resolve
and to exert unbearable physical, economic and psychological
pressure on them to drive them, eventually, to withdraw their
material, political and moral support for the resistance against
the occupation. They see in the location of the major checkpoints,
just like the snaking route of the separation wall, ample evidence
of the insatiable Israeli lust for annexation and land grab. More
importantly, Palestinians are convinced that the major checkpoints,
just like the separation wall are intended to block the creation of
a viable and contiguous independent Palestinian state alongside
Israel, with Arab Jerusalem as its capital. And in the absence of a
clear and explicit Israeli commitment to a political settlement on
the basis of the pre-1967 borders, it is difficult to prove them
wrong.
One among Many
If the Palestinians in the OPT suffer from the consequences of
restrictions on movement - and as a form of collective punishment
checkpoints make everyone suffer - different groups of people are
further subjected to additional sets of Israeli practices or
violations of human rights.
Such violations might take the form of the use of excessive and
disproportionate force, which so far has resulted in the death of
more than 4,000 (about half of them innocent civilians, including
more than 700 minors); extra-judicial killings (which so far have
claimed over 400 lives of targeted and non-targeted individuals);
bulldozing and confiscation of land; uprooting of fruit-bearing
trees; house demolitions; the destruction of infrastructure
(especially during military offensives); arrests and administrative
detentions; settler violence against Palestinian civilians and
their homes and crops; repeated incursions into areas under full
Palestinian control; denial of access to holy places and shrines;
denial of access to schools and fields due to the separation wall,
and denial of work inside Israel; breaking into and searching of
thousands of homes in the middle of the night; deportations or
forcible transfers of scores of intifada activists from the West
Bank to Gaza; closures of institutions and revoking of permanent
residency status in East Jerusalem.
In light of this, it is perhaps a mistake to focus on the effects
of checkpoints in isolation or in abstraction from the other
practices and human rights violations. It is true that restrictions
on movement (enforced by the checkpoints) are to blame for the bulk
of the material and nonmaterial losses and related sufferings. But
the gravity and intensity of the combined effects of the other
practices and human rights violations should not be underestimated
or allowed to recede into the background.
Empathizing with the Soldiers?
A certain measure of psychological distancing is needed to be able
to appreciate the predicament of the soldiers manning the
checkpoints and to see how they cope with the host of problems and
moral dilemmas they might encounter daily and the nightmares that
might haunt their sleep, and how their unmediated and intensive
contact with Palestinians in the OPT reflects on their attitudes
and patterns of behavior toward their fellow Israeli citizens. From
the perspective of the detached and impartial observer, the
soldiers manning the checkpoints can be objects of sympathy, even
pity. They look tired, bored, frustrated, worried, and at times
even scared to death. One can also think about the worries and
concerns of their families and friends. But in the direct
encounters between soldiers and Palestinians lining up to cross
checkpoints or under curfew, an encounter characterized by
psychological "under-distance," the dominant feelings of
Palestinians are fear, resentment, anger, hatred, and contempt.
These soldiers are, first and foremost, the representatives of the
occupation, its principal agents of repression, harassment and
humiliation.
In any case, one should not lose the ability to make important
relevant distinctions: Not all the soldiers at the checkpoints
share the same characteristics. Some seem to enjoy - even relish -
commanding, harassing, humiliating and even beating Palestinians.
There are those who appear to carry out and comply with
instructions to the letter, without emotions, thoughts or moral
scruples. Finally, there are soldiers who happen to be helpful,
apologetic and considerate. To what extent their different
attitudes reflect their political persuasion, education, age,
ethnic background, rank or terms of service is not always easy to
tell. Yet again, it is perhaps asking too much to expect the
Palestinians to relate to the thoughts, feelings and moral problems
of the agents of their occupiers and oppressors.
Conclusion
Checkpoints and, for that matter, the monstrous separation wall,
are not the sort of fences that "make good neighbors." They are a
form of violence and will only breed and nurture resentment and
hatred, and they incur enormous material and nonmaterial losses on
the Palestinians. Israel's legal and moral right to protect its
citizens and soldiers from attacks is not in question - well over
1,000 were killed during the second intifada, and a very high
percentage of them were civilians, including children. What is in
question, however, is Israel's legal and moral right to
collectively punish, humiliate, besiege and impoverish a whole
nation in order to prevent or reduce attacks against its own
citizens by a small minority of militants. This is a normative
question that can and should be settled by appeal to moral
principles and norms of international humanitarian law. Isn't it
also the case that collective punishment increases, rather than
decreases, violence and the motivation for violence? Unfortunately,
Israelis and Palestinians and their respective supporters disagree
about the truth or falsity of normative judgments, as well as about
the facts. As a consequence, the vicious circle of violence and
counter-violence remains unbroken.
I certainly am not one to advocate, justify or even tolerate
violence against civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinian.
However, one has to be politically naïve and conceptually
blind in order to sincerely believe that there is a way out of this
cycle of violence and distrust other than through political action,
predicated on the firm commitment to a reasonable and sustainable
solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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