ISRAEL: Nine hours at Eretz checkpoint

By Ashraf Khalil in Chicago

My adventures as an Arab American journalist crossing in and out of Israel have already been documented here.

But even for someone who goes in expecting delays, aggressive questioning and the occasional strip search, my experience on Sunday leaving the Gaza Strip through the Eretz border crossing was a shock.

About 18 months ago, Israel completed construction of a massive automated inspection terminal at Eretz.

The size of a warehouse, a bewildering high-tech cattle pen built with one primary goal: to ensure that everyone coming out of Gaza gets their bags and their body thoroughly screened long before they ever get in a room with an Israeli.

Dozens of automated doors and gates open and close before you; disembodied Israeli voices tell you where to stand, when to walk into various scanning devices and when to open your bags, display them to the cameras and place them on conveyor belts.

The terminal was built...

t...with the idea of screening the many Gazan laborers who used to commute daily to their jobs in Israel. A few months after the opening, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, and Israel (with Egyptian assistance) largely sealed Gaza's borders.

Now nobody even tries to get out except journalists, Gazans employed by international organizations, those with high-level connections to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah or medical-need cases cleared for treatment in Israeli hospitals.

Eretz normally opens around 7 a.m. I arrived Sunday at 10:30 a.m., hoping to miss the morning rush of medical patients. I found a large group of Palestinians gathered outside the trailer that serves as a coordination office with the Israelis. The border hadn't opened yet and there was no word on when it would.

We waited. There was nothing else to do. We drank tea and coffee, and swapped cigarettes and stories. Two enterprising youths sold lemon slushies out of a cooler, which tasted and felt fantastic on a blazing day. A small group of presumably urgent medical cases was permitted through around 11:30, then nothing for hours.

Around 1:30 p.m. I started to worry, since the border was supposed to close at 2:30.

I called the manger of the crossing. He first denied there was anything wrong, then said to call him back in 10 minutes, then another 10 minutes. On the final call, he yelled at me to leave him alone and direct my calls to the army, then hung up. (In fairness, he later turned out to be a decent guy having a really bad day.)

Getting desperate, I called the army press office and a senior Ministry of Information official. They reported back that the computer system had fried and the intricate network of automated doors wasn't working right. Technicians were on the way, but it would take a few more hours.

We waited more. What other choice did we have? 

If anything, the Gazans  were far more patient than the foreigners, who are less accustomed to having their movements restricted. There was a Russian journalist and an Austrian man growing increasingly indignant, and I wasn't handling things too gracefully either.

The Palestinians took it with stoicism and the occasional flash of humor.

"If they just sent in one clever Gazan, he'd have it fixed in 10 minutes," one guy told me. "If we can get our cars to run on cooking oil, we can fix their broken doors."

The majority of our group seemed to be medical-need cases and their families. I met a man who had been waiting three months to get his ailing mother to a Jerusalem hospital, and a woman whose infant daughter needed open-heart surgery. One young boy of about 6 seemed to have both physical and mental defects and sported a fresh hospital bracelet on his wrist.

Around 5 p.m., we all received the green light. We hurried across 200 yards of battle-scarred no-man's land, through concrete-walled corridors.  Finally the whole group came to a set of automated doors, where they left us for another 90 minutes with no communications.

Then the doors opened and another mad rush ensued into the mechanized maze of the now-functional inspection terminal.

I emerged on the Israeli side after 7 p.m., almost nine hours after I arrived. Some of the group, especially the medical cases, had been there since 7 a.m.

I was almost too tired and disoriented to be angry, but decided to hold off and calm down for a few days before writing about the experience.

I'm now in Chicago on a break, with the chance to evaluate things in hindsight. And I still have an issue with the way the Israelis handled things.

The problems were real; it's not like they were making up the computer malfunction.
But the decisions made after that  speak volumes about the way Israel views and deals with Gazans.

We were perhaps 45 people, including at least 15 children. Not exactly a huge logistical problem to inspect our bodies and our bags; that'€™s one hour in the life of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport and every other airport in the world.

If the Israelis had sent five soldiers out to pat us down, question us and search our bags, the whole process would have been wrapped up by 1 p.m. at the latest.

Instead they chose to let us cook while the technicians tinkered away.

It'€™s simply not something you would do to people you regarded as people instead of dangerous animals.

Comments

[trustee]

I will make no excuses for the inconveniences you suffered. I am an American, retired marine officer, Jew, and one who made Aliyah (still residing in California) some three years ago. We Jews while travelling through, socializing within, and commuting within Israel are inconvenienced by checkpoints... only as a consequence of extremist Israeli Arabs' and other fractured violent extremist groups' EXPLOSIVE actions of the past and present with TERROR. I am happy we have the checkpoints, in the face of inconvenience, to save our national treasure of life. You are suppose to report the news unbiased and not make the news... but I guess, you, as an Arab, think that America really simpathizes with you. BECOME peaceful in your actions as much as your prose (YOU ARE YET STILL MILITANT WITH YOUR PROSE EVEN!) and I am confident that one day you will see our DEFENSES loosen up. Otherwise suffer the consequences of inconvenience. Do you really think we like spending money on security as opposed to services such as education, healthcare, and many other needed infrastructure line items? Drop the chip pal! look towards being real and understanbd that we will not tolerate ANY Arab extremism!

[Dan]

Instead of moaning and groaning about how bad Israelis treat Palestinians maybe you should focus on how bad Palestinians treat other Palestinians. The problems are among Arabs and how you treat each other. No wonder Israelis try to protect themselves.

[Victor Williams]

Do remember that the checkpoint was built because terrorists would bring explosives to the previous checkpoint, trying to blow open a gate and kill as many Israelis as possible. Movements "restricted"? The Palestinians are free to move about Gaza - why do they have a "right" to move freely about in a foreign nation? A nation that provides free hospital care, as noted here? Why, with the billions in aid given to them in the past 20 years have they not built hospitals that can treat their own people? Even with these medical cases, we see pregnant women - in labor - bringing suicide bomb-belts to blow up the hospitals. That any nation would tolerate this, and still provide the humanitarian aid that they do, boggles the mind.

[Horst Kirchner]

I waited nearly 2 weeks at the Morocco-Algeria border once. It never did open while I was there; no explanation either. Had to go back to Spain and take a boat. In political and military disputes there is little respect for misery and none for delay. As between Hamas and Israel, worldview, thought process and conviction leave little if any room for dialog and probably no hope for compromise. I see little likelihood the situation will get better.

[Your people aren't always right!]

DL you obviously are not open minded and think the israelis have a right to treat people like dirt, have you ever thought that hamas was created to defend innocent people against the animals that are aka Israelis?!?!

[Barney Rosen]

It is nice to note that the people waiting were going to a Jewish Hospital in Jerusalem, probably Hadassah, for treatment, which may I add is free!!! After past epixodes of terror at the Eretz checkpoint why should the Israeli's give any Gazan a free pass through the gates. And why should the Israeli's send out 5 soldiers to check the waiters out, they have done this before and gotten them killed or do you believe that Shaliet needs company in his room at Hotel Hamas?

[DL]

How completely selfish. Not a word, about attacks by Hamas on these checkpoints. Instead, only complaints,
about an individual's perception of disrespect. Consider
how kidnapped Israeli's are treated (held captive or
killed), compared to a few hours of inconvenience.

[Hotspur]

The main problem you seem to have been dealing with was fear.

My late father was a Vietnam war vet and I remember vividly the stories he used to tell about being so afraid that some mother or child was going to detonate a grenade while at his checkpoint.

There's no excuse for blatant discrimination. I'm Jewish and I make it a point to tell my young daughter that Arabs and Kurds are wonderful people and she has made friends in the community.

When it comes to personal safety: I confess that I just might be as skittish as those border policemen. That's not a feeling that I'm proud of...