Qalandiya

A light but frustrating morning

We arrived at 6:00 and parked on the northern (“Palestinian”) side of the checkpoint (a mistake; see below). First we greeted our friend Abu Ramzi (the baigale seller), who has moved his cart to the “porch” at the entrance to the pedestrian checkpoint, and found him in a upbeat mood. Business this morning was so good that he had to walk over to the area of Kufr Aqeb to buy additional baigale before 7:00. We then moved to the foot of the steps leading to the three entrances to the checkpoint and remained there till 7:05. All the while the newcomers flowed freely into the checkpoint and no lines built up. No one approached us for help, which is essentially the reason for our presence there. (One man asked to be helped out with paying a relative’s fine and expressed disappointment when he felt our charity was insufficient.) Only when we ourselves entered the building did we see that due to the soldiers’ poor regulation of the intake, the vestibule leading to the security-check hall was jam -packed with people. And due to pressure to get to work on time, we decided to forgo the security check and returned to our cars to leave the area via the Hizmeh checkpoint.

On the way to the Hizmeh road, the usually empty vehicle checkpoint between a-Ram and the hookup to Route 60 was manned, causing the first traffic jam of the morning. Traffic on the Hizmeh road was likewise jammed. And on the east-west section of road in Pisgat Ze’ev leading to the intersection with Route 60 south toward Jerusalem, the traffic hardly moved at all for almost 40 minutes (due, we later saw, to both a broken traffic light and an accident that blocked one of the lanes). All together it took an hour and a quarter to get from Qalandiya to French Hill (which with light traffic would take about 15 minutes). Essentially we spent more time in traffic jams than at the checkpoint itself and ended the shift severely frustrated over having wasted so much time, as we really had nothing beneficial to show for it.