Humiliation at Huwwara
Last week, while I was providing cover for one of my colleagues in the Yanoun placement, I experienced the infamous checkpoint at the entrance to the city of Nablus; Huwwara.
Unlike other checkpoints I have experienced in the West Bank, the checking of people here is manual and it involves the removal of some clothes by the men. On this day, it was a female soldier carrying out the exercise. Despite the heavy presence of soldiers, only three were doing the screening. Two queues were in use, one for women and two for men of different ages - one below 35 years and one above. They were all crowded into a 3 to 4 metre high corrugated iron shelter. With a temperature of around 40 degrees, the shelter must have been unbearable. The queue of women and children, including babies, had no shelter at all, meaning they had to queue under the sun with no way to cover their heads.
Talking to some of the people in the queue, I was told that to be able to reach the desired destination across the checkpoint, one must give him or herself the maximum time of three hours. I was told of cases where people collapse in the queue while waiting to be checked – not surprising in this heat!
The female soldier screening the men seemed to enjoy every moment of her job, gazing at the naked bodies of the poor men, especially when there were shouts of discomfort due to her slow pace of work. She seemed to be deliberately slow and was clearly unconcerned about the plight of the people. The women’s queue was processed a bit quicker and did not - in most cases - involve body searches, although some women were taken aside to a cubicle next to the men’s queue and checked by the same female soldier who was scrutinizing their papers. This meant that the women’s queue stalled whilst waiting for the search. One woman was taken to the cubicle with the explanation that she looked ‘solid’ and could be carrying a dangerous object.
The young woman was taken out of the queue, along with her shopping bags, brought before the glaring public, told to empty her bags and - as if that was not humiliating enough - the soldier started throwing all the contents of the bags on the floor as the woman sobbed. Her mother, who was accompanying her, became angry as she thought her teenage daughter might never be seen again. One’s destiny cannot be known if s/he is arrested on any kind of suspicion. The soldier shamelessly threw the woman’s ID at her and walked away uttering some words in Hebrew as the young woman continued to weep uncontrollably - humiliated, despised, shamed, and de-humanized.
Although the soldiers hide behind the words, ‘’we are only following orders……cannot defy them etc….’’, one wonders whether behind the uniform lies a human being with human feelings. How does a 17-23 year old girl dressed as a soldier feel looking at the nakedness of men old enough to be her grandfather? How would she feel if her personal effects were strewn on the ground in public? Is it not common sense that though following orders, the male soldiers should deal with the male Palestinians, at least to spare them what is left of their dignity? As I watched the scene, I imagined the young girl being my daughter. And all I could do was shed tears of hopelessness.
