Daily humiliation at Checkpoint 300

Khalid Muhammad, a thirty-six year old father of three, works in a hotel in East Jerusalem. Each morning he commutes there from his village of Husan, a journey of less than twenty kilometres. But in order to do so, he must pass through Checkpoint 300, a vast terminal set behind the eight metre high concrete wall blocking Bethlehem off from Jerusalem.

Khalid queues, often for two hours, to be let through so he can take a bus the final 10 kilometres to Jerusalem. It often takes Palestinian workers in Israel three to four hours to reach their destination.  Israelis can travel the same distance in less than half an hour along a network of roads that are for their use only.

It is still dark when Khalid reaches the checkpoint. Over 2,000 workers like him start queuing there each day from as early as 3.00am. The place hums with taxis, buses and cars carrying workers.  The air stirs with honking horns, shouting, coffee hawkers and cigarette smoke.

At the entrance under the vast concrete wall, there are two lines: one for workers and another called the ‘Humanitarian Line’.  The worker’s line is five feet wide. By 5am it is packed with men, waiting, praying, some silent, others talking and even laughing.  In winter, they light fires from cardboard boxes to keep warm.  But suppressed anger, resentment, resignation and resilience mix with the cigarette smoke that hangs in the air.

For Khalid, queuing each morning is a humiliating experience.  His son Tarik, 10, often asks him: ‘Take me to Jerusalem, I want to see where you work and to see Jerusalem’. 

But Khalid admits: ‘I don’t like my son to see his father like that, being shouted at, being told to get back, there is no dignity in it.’

The workers are mainly men between about 30 and 70, from the villages around Bethlehem: Nahallin, Husan, Al Khader and further away in Hebron.  They are all anxious to get through quickly, as work is scarce in the West Bank after many years of occupation. Mainly construction workers, if they are not in Jerusalem by 7.00am, their chance to work will be gone. It is a buyer’s market.

When the checkpoint opens at 5.05am, they surge forward and Khalid is trapped among the crowd. A few months ago, a man had a heart attack in the queue and it took forty five minutes to get him out, a distance of a few yards.  

Some men try their luck by climbing over an eight-foot high fence to join the humanitarian line. It was opened earlier this year for older people, hospital patients, women and children and for international visitors. The men consider it worth their while trying to join it. Sometimes it works, often it doesn’t.

When the siren sounds and the checkpoint opens, men move urgently through the first turnstile, hold up their permits against the glass booth, usually to a young Israeli soldier.  All Palestinians need a permit to work in Israel; an incorrect permit means being told to ‘Go Back’. There is very little argument from the workers.

When a wave of two or three hundred men has passed through, there is often a pause of fifteen minutes. The frustration builds again before the next wave is allowed through. 

Once they enter the terminal, the workers’ belts, shoes and other packages are screened, airport-style. Then they proceed to the identification booths for fingerprint identification.  This is an unreliable process – many people’s fingerprints are worn by heavy construction work.  They wipe their hands frantically on their trousers and through their hair and try the finger print machine again, or another machine. Some are turned back.

Those who make it past the obstacle course finally board buses to work. They have been up for hours and now face a day of heavy manual labour. They must return the same night through the same checkpoint before 7pm. This process is repeated every day except Jewish holidays, when the checkpoint is closed.

The government of Israel says that the checkpoints exist to provide security for Israeli citizens and that it has a duty to protect them. But under International Humanitarian Law, security measures must distinguish between combatants and civilians. They also need to be proportionate to the threat. It is dubious whether either condition is met at this checkpoint.

From the checkpoint, the outline of the tourist buses visiting Bethlehem can be seen in the nearby car lane. They are carefully insulated from the reality of Checkpoint 300 as they visit the Church of the Nativity and some of Christianity’s most holy places. For the Palestinians in the queues, it is just another day of trying to survive under occupation.