Leaving Ramallah: Welcome
I leave Ramallah tomorrow morning, after 11 days now and another 5 in October. Wish I could stay longer.
One of my reasons for spending time on the West Bank was to get a better first-hand sense of the difficulties posed by Israel’s occupation. It’s easy enough from afar to read about the bigger issues in the alternative press or directly from Palestinian sources, but sometimes the little details stand out even more.
Like the words moving across the screen at Qalandia checkpoint, right above one of the four or five long, slow lines of Palestinians waiting to cross through three turnstiles, a baggage X-ray check, and an identification check. On the other side of the checkpoint south of Ramallah are taxis and buses for the rest of the short ride to school or work or family in Jerusalem, though what counts as “Jerusalem” is a lot more inflated now than it was before Israel expanded its boundaries. Palestinians live on both sides of the checkpoint.
At the checkpoint last Sunday morning, my US passport got me through a short line for the first turnstile, but I ended up on the same line with everyone else for the next set. Well, not everyone. Cars with Israeli license plates drive through a separate road altogether. No turnstiles. Just the Palestinians wait, and foreigners who don’t bother to get a taxi with Israeli license plates.
In front of me on line stood half a dozen kids with school books. One girl’s said Beginning Hebrew. A couple of younger boys joked around, trying to figure out which line was moving fastest. Most people in my line were working age, though, mostly men. A woman with two young kids looked very tired. Five well-groomed middle-aged men in suits stood behind me, looking business-like and mostly patient; one held a bouquet of flowers. Another just behind me said in Arabic “one by one” when people crowded the second turnstile, and then repeated it in English; when I turned to him and said it looked like I was the only one there who might need the translation, he asked where I was from.
A couple of minutes later he said “This is what causes terrorism.” Probably enough to outnumber any actual terrorists who get caught trying to go through the turnstiles instead of taking a somewhat longer route and bypassing Qalandia completely.
The sign above the lines, repeating itself over and over? Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.
