Following the 1967 Six Day War Israel illegally occupied and annexed East Jerusalem, then part of the Jordanian administrated Palestinian West Bank. During the first intifada sporadic closures were imposed, preventing Palestinians in other parts of the West Bank from accessing Jerusalem (Al Quds in Arabic). Closure was consolidated into a policy in 1993 when Palestinians were required to apply for permits to enter Jerusalem. Following the start of the second intifada in 2000 the permit system was massively restricted. So now, while tourists saunter freely between Bethlehem and Jerusalem (the grim, grey concrete of the wall is here painted a reassuring beige for their benefit), the vast majority of West Bank Palestinians are severed from their cultural, spiritual and economic centre.
For example, my friend Ahmad, whose first baby – a son named Kenan – was born (mabruk! al-hamdulillah! etc, etc) there last week. His wife Sabrine has a Jerusalem ID and they wanted their baby to be born in Al Quds so that he could also enjoy a Jerusalem ID. Sabrine was in hospital for several days – the first few waiting for Kenan to make a very late appearance, the next few recovering from the required C-section. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall Ahmad waited, the anxiety of absence added to new father nerves.
When I was last here, in the summer of 2005, the Bethlehem-Jerusalem checkpoint was a small, open-air steel shelter with a single turnstile, metal detector and ID inspection point. Since then the checkpoint has tarted itself up into a ‘terminal’ (which you are politely implored, in Hebrew, Arabic and English, to keep clean – never has the temptation to wantonly litter been so great). It’s a huge building, with shiny blue beaming, high ceilings and magnolia walls. It has male, female and disabled toilets. And at the end, a dozen little booths with glass windows. It’s a checkpoint that calls itself a terminal and looks like a border crossing, feels like a border crossing. Like a border crossing crossed with a labyrinth.
To pass the pseudo-border: you walk up a length caged above by corrugated iron, to the right by a steel fence and to the left by the 6 metre high concrete wall, then pass through a gap in the wall, then through a full length turnstile, you flash your passport/ID to the guard in the booth, walk through a metal detector, around a fenced off section of road, are greeted by three bright yellow signs (Hebrew/Arabic/English), which outline a series of instructions before concluding with the exclamation, ‘MAY YOU GO IN PEACE AND RETURN IN PEACE!’ (I’m still trying to work out which is worse: if it was designed irony-intended or irony-unaware), you then enter a sheltered area where barriers have you zig-zagging back and forth until you’re finally in the terminal building, here there are four queues you can join, although usually you’ll get to the front of one only to be told (in Hebrew, which chances are, you don’t understand) to move to another (and another, and maybe another, and then sometimes back to the first one), when you eventually get to the right one there’s another turnstile, then you remove a random and variable combination of your shoes, belt and jacket, put your bag on the conveyor belt for the scanner, walk through another metal detector, which you may be made to do a handful of times (at this stage if they decide you’re worthy of the ‘VIP’ treatment’ you get taken into a little cubicle marked ‘FURTHER INSPECTION ROOM’), then you can walk either to the left or the right, at each end there’s a door you pass through to enter a small enclosed area, which you attempt to exit through another door, although often you find it won’t open and you’ll have to go back on yourself and then right if you went left and left if you went right, then through the other dual door set, then you approach the row of booths, walk up and down by the empty ones, identify the one or, rarely, two that are open, patiently distract the soldiers inside from their daze/nap/gossip, flash your passport and visa if you’re foreign or your ID and magnetic pass if you’re Palestinian, are maybe questioned and further delayed until you can pass through the final turnstile and then, at long last, you’re on the road to Al Quds.
If that was time-consuming and boring to read, it’s at least ten times more time-consuming and boring to do. But there’s a definite method to the madness. The frustration of extending, by literal twists and turns, a crossing that should take half a minute into a humiliating ordeal that can last hours, intensifies Palestinians’ physical separation from Jerusalem and plants the seeds of a sort of psychological separation. A border to the eye becomes a border in the mind. On a more basic level, it’s bloody annoying and it makes you not want to bother. Which, I suppose, is exactly the point.
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