From Qalandiya to Jerusalem
Entering back into Israel from the West Bank was never easy, but the first time I did it was especially painful.
Trigger warning: this post contains violent imagery.
Walking toward the entrance to Qalandiya checkpoint, I shielded my eyes from the morning sun, trying to act normal — as if I’d done this a million times before.
My colleagues and I lined up single-file behind a few dozen Palestinians and I watched as, one by one, they went through a grated rotating door into the unknown. One man was walking through when the soldiers abruptly locked the rotation mechanism while he was mid-stride, and the poor guy all but slammed his head into the metal bars.
My friends, however, passed to the other side unscathed.
When it was my turn, I pushed my way through that heavy door, the metal cool against my trembling fingers. My eyes adjusted to the dim space and I scanned the room for the source of a loud hum. I discovered a conveyer belt in front of me that resembled something like that of an airport security checkpoint, except that it was rickety, corroded, and the source of that unsettling sound. I took off my jewelry, stuffed it into the side pocket of my bag, and set it on the belt before walking through a grimy-looking metal detector.
Two young girls, probably eighteen or nineteen and just starting their required military stint, were sitting behind bulletproof glass to my left. One of them beckoned me over, and I approached her window. She had blonde curly hair that fell across her green uniform, smeared black eyeliner, and a look of mild annoyance on her face — as if this was the last thing she had time for.
I held my passport up to the window, pressing it against the glass so she could see my picture. Then I turned to the visa page and held it up again. She looked at me with disgust, but said nothing. I glared back, and for a moment, we simply stared at one another, locked in a standoff. Finally, I cocked my head in a gesture of impatience, some latent instinct bubbling up from within: maybe if I made the first move, I would win. She hesitated for a beat, but then, with a flick of her hand, permitted me to continue. For just an instant I froze, stunned by the small, delicate fingers that possessed so much power.
My bag was waiting for me on the other side of the x-ray machine, but the strap was caught in the rotating mechanism that brought the belt back around to the front. I reached down to free the strap, and before I knew it, the conveyor belt had sucked my hand into its rotation. First my fingers, then my knuckles, were caught and pulled down until the flesh of my hand was too thick to go any farther. The belt continued rotating and rubbing against my skin with fierce, unyielding pressure. It was a machine without awareness, simply moving through its repetitive motions.
I cried out and looked back at the two Israeli women, but they didn’t hear me through the glass and the noise of the machine. The Palestinian man behind me, also cleared to pass through, yelled sharply to catch their attention. The blonde woman looked first at me, then at her colleague, startled. The machine came to a sudden, silent stop.
Gingerly, the man lifted my hand up and out from the belt, an especially kind gesture in light of the social and religious taboos against men and women making physical contact. But before I could thank him, the noisy machine was back on, doing its job.
I looked back at the girls behind the glass for some kind of recognition, even just a moment of acknowledgment, but it was as if nothing had happened. They were already ushering the next people through, ignoring us. I grabbed my bag and exited through another metal revolving door.
I was in Israel.
I stood in the sun, shocked. I looked around for the man who had helped me, but he was gone. My hand was raw and tender. Layers of skin had come off in a sudden burn, but nothing was bleeding yet. I bent my elbow to raise my hand upward and held it still, unsure of what to do: would letting it hang down make it worse? It didn’t look as bad as it felt. I probably just needed some antiseptic and a few band-aids. Maybe there were some at our destination, which was the office for the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demolition (ICAHD). Maybe we would have time to stop at a market, and I could grab some first aid supplies.
One of my colleagues, a brilliant lawyer from the Netherlands, was outraged as we climbed into a tiny bus: “This would never happen in a place where people actually care about other human beings,” she scoffed. I took solace in this crumb of comfort and sighed.
I felt a familiar pang — just a sliver. Like when, as a kid, I’d been punched hard in the gut with no recourse.
There’s no frustration like that of experiencing repeated injustice.
I squeezed into the back of our small bus between a man from Vermont and a woman from the UK. We made small talk, and I managed to participate, but there was a haze over my eyes. I was shaking.
Back in Nablus, my English students gasped in horror at my hand. I hadn’t been able to find an appropriate bandage for the large, funny-shaped chunks of raw skin wrapped around my knuckles, so I simply smeared antibacterial ointment on the awkward injury twice per day and avoided touching anything.
“Your hand!” one of them cried and I smiled for a moment, inwardly pleased with this advanced demonstration of English skills.
I shook my head, at a loss for words. “Qalandiya,” was all I said, and they nodded knowingly, deep sympathy in their eyes. They understood exactly what I meant. They’d all been through more checkpoints than I could ever dream of — not just the big permanent ones like Qalandiya, but also numerous mobile “pop-up” checkpoints that appear overnight, sometimes under the auspices of protecting Israeli settlers, sometimes for no reason at all.
One time, a student didn’t show up for several consecutive classes. When he finally returned, I teased him a little about his absence, cajoling, finally asking him outright where he’d been.
He had been in prison.
The teasing grin on my face disappeared in a heartbeat, and I became acutely aware of his pallor — he was pale and ashen. I observed the dark rings under his eyes. This was the moment I began to understand that getting arrested was a sort of a right of passage for Palestinian men. Most of them were held indefinitely without charges.
I eventually got used to even this, so that whenever a man mentioned his most recent stint in prison, it was just a normal part of his life, like a job or an errand.
Qalandiya is the name of three places in the West Bank: the checkpoint, the town next to the checkpoint, and the refugee camp next to the town.
In 2010, I volunteered for a non-governmental organization in the West Bank city of Nablus. Within the first week of being there, a few of my colleagues invited me to join them on a tour with ICAHD that started in Jerusalem. I agreed to join them, eager to learn more about the strange phenomenon of housing demolition.
So that’s what brought me to Qalandiya for the first time.
I wouldn’t ever admit it aloud, but I’d been nervous about crossing back into Israel for the start of that tour. It was my first time walking through a checkpoint, and Qalandiya is notoriously — until this day — the hardest place to pass.
As soon as we were in the door of the ICAHD office, I asked our tour guide if he had a first-aid kit. My hand had settled into a steady throb, hot and swollen.
“Sorry, no,” he said sympathetically, shaking his head, and we commenced our tour to learn about housing demolition.
In Israel and occupied Palestine, it is common practice for the Israeli military to demolish the homes of people accused of any manner of crimes. For example, if homes in certain parts of the West Bank don’t have Israeli-issued permits, they will be demolished. Similarly, if a man is accused of a crime, his family home will be demolished. According to the ICAHD website, there are four different categories of demolition:
- Punitive demolitions: Houses demolished as punishment for the actions of people associated with the houses.
- Administrative demolitions: Houses demolished for lack of a building permit.
- Land-clearing operations/Military demolitions: Houses demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces in the course of military operations for the purposes of clearing off a piece of land, achieving a military goal, or to kill wanted persons as part of Israel’s policy of extrajudicial executions.
- Undefined demolitions: These include mainly demolitions resulting from land-clearing operations and removal of Palestinian populations.
On the tour, we’d be seeing the sites of several demolitions, as well as meeting people who had been directly affected by the practice of home demolition.
I cradled my hand all day, afraid to let it touch anything. The burning got worse, but there was no blood, just swelling around the base of my right index and middle fingers, all over my knuckles, and across the back of my hand. Still, I was able to put the incident behind me as I listened to our guide’s storytelling and knowledge.
On that tour, I learned about many of the hardships Palestinians living in the West Bank face, carefully filing the new information into the compartment that has helped me survive my entire life with an awareness of famine and war and oppression and injustice happening all around me.
I inhale sharply and hold these pieces of humanity at arms length, because if I examine them too closely, I might burst into flames or cry until I wither.
I’d always been so quick to take on the burden of the world’s problems. I kept trying to bear their weight on my one set of shoulders, to hold them in my one damaged hand. I hadn’t yet accepted that it was going to take a whole lot more than one woman to sway the direction of the planet. Our interdependence and the power we possessed en masse was still a small whisper below the surface of my consciousness; glimpsing our interconnectedness as humans was a revelation yet to come.
Sometimes, when the light is just right, I can still see the scars on my knuckles and fingers. They remind me that every day, humans are suffering at the hands of other humans.
And I know with every fiber of my being that it’s unnecessary.
When I can’t see my scars, I don’t get to forget about oppression. Selective ignorance is a violent luxury.
Being Jewish, all of this is complicated for me. Rather than focusing on who is right or wrong, though, I only insist upon the simplest path to peace.
Preferably, it’s a gentle road that doesn’t involve rickety x-ray machines and cold soldiers, but instead compassion, curiosity, and willingness to try.
