People usually talk about the checkpoints between Isreal and Palestine in a more serious manner than I am about to. It is always an adventure for me when traveling through a checkpoint unfortunatley, and I thought I'd share, just so you can avoid doing all the things that I've done.
First I'll paint you a picture of the bethlehem checkpoint. To walk across the border, there are two stations you must pass through. So lets say we are coming from the bethlehem side going to the Israeli side. First you walk up a slight hill through things that look like cattle chutes but with a roof and random pieces of barb wire attached to the sides. Pieces of barbed wire that I am very aware of since I have a habit of tripping over air and falling into walls and doors. When you get to the top of this hill, there are a series of rotating gateways made out of metal piping with a green a red light on the top. If its green, then you can use it, but if its red, then the area on the other side is closed. So first, find the one that is greenly lit, walk through, show your passport to the soldier in the booth, walk through another spinning gate thing, walk across a randomly placed and unused road to another cattle chute (not an actual cattle chute, it just remind me of them). Walk through the cattle chute to another turny gate thing, following the path that turns downward, leading you into a hug mini costco sized building but with walls that are half the lenght of the total height of the building. There are five or six gates on your right hand side that start from where you walk in and go all the way to the end of building width ways. Find out which one is open (green), then walk through the narrow walkway ( I have to turn sideways and shuffle down it; very narrow), The path of the lines remind me of the lines at airports where it twists and turns; doubling back on itself. Then you get to another twisty gate with a camera looking at you. The camera sees you, and then the people in the other room push a button that lets you turn the gate once so you get to the other side. Then you put your stuff, shoes, bags, belts, jackets, pocket inhabits on the belt to go through the xray machine, walk through the metal/bomb detector, there is now a booth with a soldier inside on your right. You can try to make eye contact and smile but they never look at you, they are looking at the monitor of the cameria that is looking at you. ;) Pick up your bags, shoes, jackets on your right, put it all back on, then follow everyone else through a maze of turns, arrive at a domesticated toll booth looking section at the other end of the building, show your passport to the soldier in the booth, (If your American, they don't even look at it, but for palestinians, they must put their hand on this 007 hand scanning machine and answer a couple questions). Then walk through a small turn gate like you see in a subway stations, and TADA, exit to your left through the big doors and start trying to negotiate prices with the 10 taxi drivers that are eagerly awaiting your arrival to the other side!
So, now that you know exactly what this place looks like through my incredible illustrative description, you would think it wouldn't be too hard to get through. After all, the first time I went through there was a crowd of people and I was with three other americans who had all been through before and it only took us like 5 minutes or so. Well, fast forward to the the next two times I went through the checkpoint.
Story 1.)
Walking across the border for the first time by yourself is nerve racking. I was heading from the Israel side to the Bethlehem side on Nakba day. Nakba day is a day of remembrance for the Palestinians in which they remember all those who died and/or lost their homes in the 1948 war between the Israelies and Palestinians. A week or less before Nakba day, was Israels Independence Day. According to an email I got from the US State Department the previous morning, all americans traveling abroad in the area of the West Bank and Israel should not travel outside their homes unless necessary and should be on alert for possible unpeaceful demonstations due to it being Nakba day. Fabulous! Well I needed to go to Bethlehem to surprise Emans youngest sister on her birthday so...I made a plan to meet someone on the other side as soon as I got there. It'll be alright.
When I woke up that morning I had heard from the news, (well someone translating the news for me) that there had been a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv where an Arab driver of a semi-truck went down the wrong way of the highway, weaving and smashing into oncoming cars purposefully, finally coming to a stop when it hit a bus. Hmmmm maybe this was an isolated incident, I thought.
[ Brief side note: past Nakba days have been peaceful, with peaceful protest here and there. Mostly its a day of mourning and rememberance for the Palestinians; however, with tensions rising both locally and the Middle East in general, this Nakba day was a violent one. It just another piece of evidence that shows how dangerous its getting here.]
As I'm taking a taxi to the border, I hear the news on the radio and every other word is Palestine, (it was in Hebrew) so I ask the taxi driver what the news was saying. In his really bad english, he told me there had been more attacks in Israel, on a train, and with a car, and on the borders. .....Well crap, I thought. I figured it would still be okay since I am meeting someone on the other side and I had already spent money on a taxi so ...I'm going! I was quite a bit nervous when we got to the checkpoint. He let me out on the Israel side of the border since he can't go through because he is an Israeli, I got my suitcase, and started walking toward the entrance of the checkpoint, noticing the unusually high presence of Israeli army soldiers, weapons, and HumV's. I was starting to regret my decision at this point, but was still not going to pay money to take a taxi back so I said a prayer for protection, and walked into the checkpoint building.
It was completely dead inside. I remembered that someone told me that Palestinians are not allowed through the checkpoints on this day; but that left me with a problem. Usually there was a crowd of people I could follow from one end to the other; otherwise, I had no idea where to turn and where not to turn.
All the signs were in arabic or hebrew, and there weren't any pictures to help a sister out either. So I walked down a hallway, got to a door, hesitantly pushed on it, half expecting an alarm to go off, but there wasn't an alarm and the door didn't open. I doubled back, trying to find someone who could point me in the right direction. It was like a maze in there. I got back to the beginning and asked the soldier which way to go. He casually pointed in a direction so I headed that way. However, when I got closer I saw that I had to go left or right. I turned back in his direction to get his attention, no luck. I peeked around one corner, not wanting to go in a restricted area, and then peeked around the other sides' corner. I stood there for a bit trying to decode the arabic and hebrew words thinking, "which sign looks less intimidating?" Instead I walked down two other hallways and got to either a dead end or a locked security gate; the whole time I was super embarrassed that as the soldiers are watching me via cameras wander around this place aimlessly and lost, I couldn't help but think they were doing ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS to see who would have to go get me. I headed back once again to the original soldier in the booth and asked him again which way. "Yamina! Yamina!" he said, which means right. so I headed out the building that I just entered through some cattle chute looking thing, then thank goodness there were no more options after that until I got to the area with the rotating gates. Now I had to try to figure out how to get my luggage through the upright turning security gate that is only big enought to fit my body and not both my body and luggage simultaneously. I think security got a kick out of watching me try four differnt methods until I figured out how to succesfully get both me and my bags to the other side. Here is how it worked: I would put my bag in an open section, then step back, forcefully rotate the metal pipes on the gate like it was the wheel of fortune. This would drag my bag to the opposite side, where in which I would squeeze my arm through the bars so that hopefully my finger tips could reach my bag and push it over. It would then land outside of the rotating gate allowing me to continue to rotate it a full 360 degrees back around and start over again with another piece of luggage. Keep in mind that security is watching me on cameras somewhere, pushing the green button that lets the gate rotate only once. This allows for an awkward moment of pushing your bag to the other side, getting ready to push another bag, realizing that the gate wont turn, and then stepping back to look in the camera with a "If its not a burden, could you push the button again" look, and then feeling like a dork when you push on it too soon and it still doesn't open for another ten seconds. HaHa. Yaaa checkpoints!!
After having to perform that maneuver at another three gates, I finally got to the other side of the checkpoint and into Bethlehem. It was peacefully quiet except for the 10 taxi drivers offering their service all at once. Bethlehem was really quiet, which is abnormal. It usually busy, noisy, lot of people everywhere, but today it was peaceful. I think maybe I expected riots and big crowds of people with everything that was going on that day; but there weren't any.
I've noticed that when it comes to the other side of the wall, whether it be Israel or Bethlehem, its usually completely different than what I'm told it will be like according to someone who isn't allowed there. (Israelis aren't allowed into Bethlehem, and most Palestinians are not allowed into Israel unless they have a pass.) As someone who is always going back and forth from one side of the wall to the other, I notice that I am always breaking assumptions that others make about the side that I just came from. Interesting......I think.
Story 2.)
With my two pieces of luggage in tow and my backpack on my...back...I am leaving Bethlehem where I stayed for a week with the family of one the palestinians who was part of SSE. Because I had never through this side of the checkpoint by myself, Eman and her mom used their passes to take me across. They only get passes a couple times a year that allows them to go to Israel. These passes were from Easter which allowed them to go to Israel for one day for religious reasons. They used them instead to get me across the checkpoint, but don't worry - these passes expired in a couple days and Easter had already passed so they were happy to use them to get me across. You've Gotta love arab hospitality! Anywhoo, after I go through the whole "getting the luggage through the gates one by one" adventure again, we arrive at the metal detector/ xray machine. I put my backpack on the belt and walk through the metal detector. As I walk through; however, the metal/explosives detector goes off. I stop mid-stride with my eyes as big as apples, hurry back to the other side, frantically check my pockets and body to see if I had any metal on. I didn't so I tried walking through again. BEEP BEEP BEEP!! I froze again and looked up at the cameras with a helpless look on my face. I was scared ninja soldier assasins were going to deploy out of secret compartments in the walls or something. I looked back at Eman and whispered, "What do I do?!" still in a frozen stance. She said, "Ask the guy in the booth." Oh there is a guy in a booth? Four more steps and I see to the right a soldier in the booth laughing waving his hand for me to pass through........Well I felt dumb. haha So I passed through and went to get my backpack and luggage off the belt. I grabbed my luggae but when I tried to pick my backpack up and swing it over my shoulder, I was instead pulled back toward the belt because the long strap on my backpack got caught in one of the rotating pieces of the belt. my strap had wrapped around the pipe in the conveyor belt and then lodged itself between the rotating piece and the side of the machine. Thank goodness no one was behind us because there was no way I could have worked on getting this out with people trying to reach for their items as well. So there I am, at the end of a xray machine, pulling like the dickens trying to get my strap out of the belt before more people came and needed to use the machine. I'm pulling and pulling but it was lodged in there good; not budging. The cameras around me felt like a stadium of people looking on as this rediculous American girl was doing something to the machine. The whole goal of the checkpoint is to move through and move through quickly. Now I probably look like I'm planting something in the machine, I thought. Frazzled, I turn to Eman and ask, "Do you have something sharp, like a knife to cut this?" And almost immediately I think, "really, Hannah? A knife? Ya she's gonna have a knife at a checkpoint!" After 5 minutes of pulling, pushing and pulling, standing on the machine and pulling some more, it finally came out. Red faced and triumphant, I put my backpack on while noticing the subtle " we're trying not to laugh but its really hard not to" smiles on the faces of Eman and her mom. Just wanting to move on to another section where there would be different cameras with different soldiers who had not yet become aware of my clumsiness, I followed eman through the maze to get to the other side where the last booth was.
There was a little bit of a line so I took the opportunity to get my passport out and ready for the guy at the booth. Standing patiently in line, getting lost in a daydream, I suddenly realized I was getting looks from the other Palestinians around me in line. First it was one, then two, then they were almost all snapping their heads so far in my direction I couldn't help but look bethind me to see what they were looking at. But behind me they were doing the same thing; looking at me. What is going on? I thought. Eman and her mom were in another line. "Crap, What did I do wrong? Who did I offend?" I was thinking. Right when everyone around me started moving away from me in all directions, I heard it. "beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep." Oh my gosh! What is that, I thought. It sounds like a bomb! Oh my gosh, there's a bomb in the checkpoint, I was thinking. It took about 2.5 seconds for my eyes to get big, a wave of panic to rush over me, and my ear to snap in the direction of the beeping sound before I realized.........OH MY GOSH! Its my catchphrase! I threw my bag off my shoulder, unzipped my suitcase, dug for the game, pulled it out and pushed the stop button. The game had accidentally turned on as I leaned against the wall. Now as I'm on my knees with my suitcase unzipped in the middle of the bethlehem checkpoint, I think to myself, its people like me isn't it! It's people like me that give everyone the ammunition to use the term, "Stupid American!" haha Way to let down your nation there, Hannah! I looked up at the Palestinian faces around me with a nervous laugh and said, "Oops, my bad! It's just a game," waiving it around so ppl could see, "Sorry." And with that, everyone turned right back around and continued in line, leaving me to put my suitcase back together. While I'm doing this and feeling mortified, Eman yells from another line, "Hannah, don't let them cut, you need to be assertive, Say something to them!" haha, she didn't realize what just happened. The rest of the way through the checkpoint, all 20 feet of it, was uneventful; thank goodness. I had almost had a heart attack on five different occasions in there. "Good thing you are a pale, blue eyed, blonde american," said eman, "That probably would have gone in a whole different direction if you were arab." All I could say at that point was, "True dat, Eman, True..Dat!" with a relieving sigh.
