http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/A1910-2001Jun29.html
West Bank Checkpoint
By Wendy Pearlman
Saturday, June 30, 2001; Page A31
BIR ZEIT, West Bank -- It is 100 degrees, and the sun blazes overhead
as I trudge up the hill. I have just finished a full day's work and am
lugging vegetables that I picked up on my way home. I try to ignore
the soldier leaning against his tank in the middle of the road, his
machine gun in hand and ready to fire. But this is getting more and
more difficult to do.
I live in the Palestinian village of Bir Zeit, where life has recently
become hostage to the Israeli military checkpoint stationed to
obstruct traffic on the main road connecting us to the rest of the
West Bank. Last March the Israeli army used bulldozers to tear up the
road, halting movement between 35 surrounding villages and the town of
Ramallah. Although Palestinians came together to repair the damage and
reopen the road, Israeli tanks and armed soldiers have remained
stationed here.
For the past two weeks, the soldiers have been forcing almost everyone
traveling from one point to another to get out of their taxis, abandon
their cars and cross the checkpoint on foot. At best this requires
people to gather their belongings and walk a long distance in the sun
before catching another ride. Yet it is also not unusual for soldiers
to stop people or turn them back, inspect identity cards, confiscate
car keys or fire tear gas bombs and rubber bullets.
Like some 65,000 Palestinian citizens and dozens of other
internationals living in Palestine, I travel this road on a nearly
daily basis. And on a number of occasions, when I am too frustrated to
just pass by the soldiers, I have stopped and talked to them. I ask
them what they think about making so many men, women and children deal
with this daily torment. Their replies leave me dumbfounded. Again and
again, Israeli soldiers tell me that if Palestinians suffer enough
they will give up the current uprising. If daily life becomes too
unbearable, they say, then the Palestinians will become frustrated and
put pressure on President Yasser Arafat to end the resistance and
"stop the violence."
The crux of these comments, while obvious to most Palestinians, may be
surprising for Western audiences. The checkpoint is not a security
measure designed to prevent terrorists from transporting bombs. It is
a political tactic aimed at making Palestinians suffer in order to
break their wills. As one soldier told me, Israel knows that at least
99 percent of all the people crossing this checkpoint want nothing
more than to get to work or school. Nevertheless, it is a military
order to fill their path with obstacles.
This Israeli policy of deliberately tormenting a captive civilian
population is not only morally abhorrent. It is also just plain
illogical. Does Israel really think that if it tortures Palestinians
then Palestinians will oppose Arafat? Is it not obvious that when
Israel tortures Palestinians, Palestinians rise up in opposition to
Israel?
Israel's logic of power is doomed to boomerang. In its fear of
terrorism, Israel employs warlike violence that drives people to
terrorism. In its effort to crush radicalism, Israel has imposed a
siege that is making people more radical. A person who takes his own
life in a suicide bombing is a person whose political horizons have
been so blocked that he sees no alternative means of demanding his
rights from a hostile power. Bombs do not go off in Tel Aviv because
Palestinians want Arafat to make concessions to Israeli demands. Bombs
go off because Israel's siege on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has
left many Palestinians feeling that they have nothing left to lose.
The more Israel makes the Palestinian people suffer, the more Israel
will suffer in the long run. If the Israeli public feels no sympathy
for the suffering of the Palestinian people, it could at least do
better at attending to its own interests. The Palestinians I see
crossing the checkpoint each day are not on the verge of surrender.
They are righteously angry, as I am angry and as anyone forced to
submit to such humiliation would be angry. The checkpoint only
reinforces our conviction that the Israeli occupation must end. It
confirms the need for a future without checkpoints and the injustice
that they represent.
The sooner the Israeli government realizes that force will not bring
acquiescence, the sooner we can all move on to more productive ways of
dealing with the conflict. Neither checkpoints nor F-16s will coerce
the Palestinian people into relinquishing their legitimate right to
live in the land of Palestine with freedom and dignity. I must
disagree with the checkpoint soldier who told me that no one knows how
to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Here on the
blocked road between Bir Zeit and Ramallah, it seems to me that the
solution could not be simpler. Israel has only to gather up its
soldiers and settlers and leave the Palestinian territories, once and
for all.
The writer, a doctoral candidate in government at Harvard University,
resides in the town of Bir Zeit in the West Bank.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
