At 4.45, the Qalandiya checkpoint is already crowded, as thousands upon thousands of Palestinians try to make their way to Jerusalem each day.Qalandiya is the main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem, and ecumenical accompaniers (EAs) from the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (WCC-EAPPI) visit regularly in the early mornings.“If you live in East Jerusalem outside the wall, or in Ramallah for example, and you work in Jerusalem, you need to be at the checkpoint early if you want to get to work on time. Getting through the checkpoint can take anything between one and several hours,” one of the EAs explains.
It was definitely not an enjoyable experience to go through the checkpoint then, and the WCC wanted to make sure the whole world knew it.
Now in 2023, the WCC revisited the checkpoints, and found things are quite different:
Machsom Watch was founded in January 2001 by three Jewish Jerusalemite women who saw military checkpoints around Jerusalem and in the West Bank and decided to do something about it. Now 88, Barag pursues human rights as energetically as ever.Over the past five to ten years, she has noticed big changes at checkpoints: there are no more long lines of people. In fact, thousands of people come, they cross quickly, and the whole process is computerized.
This sounds great, right? Israel has cut the wait time for the Palestinian workers by hours every day. What could be wrong with that?
When your job is to demonize Israel - plenty!
“The Israeli military will tell you: look what we have done to make life easier for Palestinians, but in reality, the system is much more difficult and complicated, but you cannot see it,” says Barag. “There are over 100 types of permits.”“As human rights people, we must do something about this inhumane system of control,” she says. “We do not want to make the situation easier.”She realizes this seems like a contradiction—but what she is saying, is that the occupation should not become easier to administer because humans are increasingly less visible in the process. “Let us not open the space for soldiers to operate a machine—one that is bureaucratic—and where the gates open and close remotely,” she says. “We do not want to make the occupation more palatable; we want to see an end to the occupation.”
If the "occupation" would end and there would be two states - there would still be a border crossing between the two states! It would probably be harder for Palestinians to go to work in Israel than it is today.
And the World Council of Churches will be there to condemn that, too.
Because the problem isn't that Israel is unfair to Palestinians. The problem is that Israel exists, and the WCC is doing everything they can to remedy that situation.
(h/t Simon Wiesenthal Center)
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