First, some context: it’s been nearly a month since I’ve last posted, during which time much has happened in Egypt (elections, street violence, etc.) that I will try to write about in due time. For this post, however, I am skipping all of that in order to chronicle an experience I had last week as I was traveling in Israel and the West Bank with my friend Trevor. To all readers of the blog, Merry Christmas (belated), Happy Hanukkah, and Happy New Year (in advance).
The ride from Jerusalem to Ramallah is short. In less than hour, after zipping through the Qalandia checkpoint that separates Israel from the West Bank, Trevor and I found ourselves in the heart of Palestine. After spending two and a half days in Nablus and Ramallah (with quick trips to Bethlehem and Taybeh, a small village southeast of Ramallah that is home to the Arab world’s only microbrewery), we decided it was time to go back to Israel.
The ride from Ramallah to Jerusalem is long. After about 25 minutes, we arrived once again at Qalandia, where everyone on the bus jumped from their seats and clamored to get off as fast as possible as if their lives depended on it. Bemused, Trevor and I took our time exiting and had to retrieve our bags from underneath the bus. We had heard about the difficulties that Palestines faced in trying to pass through Qalandia, but we assumed that there would be some other way for foreigners like us to bypass that messy process and waltz back into Israel. There was not.
We assumed our place in line behind the rest of our bus in a space that can only be described as an animal pen built for humans. Metal bars on both sides of the corridor hemmed us in, and a revolving metal door at the end regulated the flow of traffic into the security area. No official was in sight, nor were there any guardrails that might have enabled us to line up in an orderly fashion. In the absence of supervision, jostling and pushing soon resulted in the formation of a giant blob of humanity pressed up against the walls and the gate.
Five people were allowed into the security area at a time. When they passed through, a buzzer above the gate emitted a prison-esque beep and the red light turned green. The revolving doors unlocked abruptly, and the blob pushed forward in an effort to squeeze through. This cattle carousel came to an abrupt end after five more people made it through, and there was often one unlucky person who found himself literally stuck in between the revolving metal doors and the bars on either side. Each prisoner stood with a forlorn, distant look in his face for a few minutes until the buzzer sounded again to let five more through.
We inched forward ever so slowly, and the congestion worsened significantly as we approached the gate. An older woman behind me clucked disapprovingly to her companion: “mithla hayawanat ihna!” (It's like we're animals!). In front, I watched through the bars as an old man was refused entry because his papers were not in order. He gestured angrily at the border guards (who were invisible from our vantage point), but finally threw up his hands in resignation and began to look for a way to return to the Palestinian side. There was no side door. Everyone waiting in and next to the metal gate had to move back to let him pass back the way he came, head down and cursing to himself.
After some time – I don’t remember how long exactly – we finally made it through the gate. As we were walking the several feet from the gate to the x-ray machine, an old woman walking between us didn’t see a piece of concrete sticking up on the ground, tripped over it, and fell onto her knees. The contents of her bag spilled onto the ground, and she looked up at me with a desperate, exhausted look that I will not soon forget. She picked herself up – no time to nurse your wounds in the no man’s land between the gate and security area – and shuffled forward.
We put our bags through an x-ray machine, walked through an unmonitored metal detector, and handed our passports to two Israeli soldiers sitting behind soundproof glass. I handed them my passport with stone-faced stare, mirroring the one I was receiving from the soldier. After flipping through it with a few cursory glances, he handed it back and waved me away dismissively. As I walked toward the bus that would take us from the checkpoint to Jerusalem, I was serenaded with one last buzzer sound and creak of the metal gate as five more humans – mithla hayawanat – pressed through.
