Fox News reported that “The Palestinians called the shooting ‘irresponsible’. Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian Authority spokesman … identified the man as Bilal Abu Libdeh, 35, from the northern West Bank city of Qalqiliya. He said Abu Libdeh was found to be unarmed when his body was recovered and that no one knew why he and the others sought to enter the settlement. ‘Regardless of the reason for them going there, they shouldn’t be killed’, he said”. This is posted here.

One of the points being debated, as “proximity” talks may soon melt into direct talks that may last for years, is whether or not the Israeli Jewish settlers can remain in the West Bank in any future scenario; maybe they can retain their Israeli citizenship and become residents of Palestine, subject to its laws, some suggest.

But former Defense Ministry official Shlomo Gazit said at a discussion organized by IPCRI (Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information) last week that there is no way Palestinian security can protect settlers who remain in the West Bank after the creation of a future Palestinian state — this can only be done by the IDF, he said.

An Israeli journalist who attended the discussion said that he believes there is no way any settlers can remain in the West Bank, because their mere presence will be an invitation to violence … of the sort that killed the merely “suspected” Bilal Abu Libdeh overnight.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

Where is this famous peace process? Does it exist? Is peace even a process to begin with? We asked blogger and author Antony Loewenstein and author and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is reported, what is the role of new media, and how can this start its own viral uprising, independent of mass media banter.

Article from GRITtv read more here

Black joins us via Skype from Kansas City, where he's professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, to break down the problems with the financial reform bill and make the case for Warren as the only way for real consumer protection.

We constantly hear about the size of the military budget, what percentage it is of our spending, what it did to the deficit. But numbers that large can simply become numbing. It's hard to fathom billions. So when Paris studio Moustache created this short film attempting to visualize the amount spent on war, we knew we had to share it with you.

Peace process, proximity talks, one state, two state...though these terms are often tossed around the mass media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they have been rendered virtually meaningless. Instead, we see footage of Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama shaking hands, waxing eloquently on the need for mutual peace as the US simultaneously slips Israeli more tax dollars to further cement their occupation of Palestine. A just peace indeed.

Where is this famous peace process? Does it exist? Is peace even a process to begin with? We asked blogger and author Antony Loewenstein and author and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abuminah about how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is reported, what is the role of new media, and how can this start its own viral uprising, independent of mass media banter.

Finally, Laura has some thoughts about Top Secret America: the unlimited budget for contractors and the constant cuts for kids.

Article from GRITtv read more here

The statement said that journalists have been “harassed, arrested and attacked by the various on site forces before these forces turn their attention to the activists or demonstrators”.

The professional organization of journalists based in Israel said, in their statement that “The FPA strongly protests what appears to be a recent policy change by the Border Police and IDF with regard to legitimate news coverage in the West Bank. Over the past months journalists covering these events have been harassed, arrested and attacked by the various on site forces before these forces turn their attention to the activists or demonstrators. We would appreciate it were the authorities to remind the various forces involved, that open, unhindered coverage of news events is a widely acknowledged part of the essence of democracy. Generally speaking this would not include smashing the face of a clearly marked photographer working for a known and accredited news organization with a stick, or for that matter aiming a stun grenade at the head of a clearly marked news photographer or summarily arresting cameramen, photographers and/or journalists – www.fpa.org.il “.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

Now the question is what will the sentences be?

UPDATE: The Haaretz headline read: “IDF convicts commander, soldier in shooting of bound Palestinian — Lt. Col. Omri Burberg was filmed holding the blindfolded prisoner and ordering his soldier, Staff Sgt. Leonardo Korea, to fire a rubber bullet his leg in Na’alin two years ago”.

According to the Haaretz report: “Burberg arrested Ashraf Abu Rahme on July 7, 2008 for his ‘involvement in disrupting the peace’. The prisoner was taken to the entry of the village, where he was bound and his eyes were covered. Burberg, who had known Abu Rahme because of his role in previous demonstrations, allegedly said: ‘Now you will stop demonstrating against the IDF’. Abu Rahme responded in Arabic, which suggests he might not understand Hebrew.
The officer suspected that Abu Rahme was lying, and turned to Korea, a soldier on his staff, and asked him: ‘What do you say – should we take him aside and shoot him with a rubber [bullet]?’ Korea said in response: ‘I have no problem to shoot him with a rubber [bullet]‘. Burberg stood the prisoner on his feet, led him to a nearby jeep and told L. to prepare a rubber bullet. ‘I already have one in the barrel’, L. responded. At that point, L. aimed at the Palestinian’s foot and fired a rubber bullet from a very short range. Burberg allegedly pushed the soldier and shouted at him for shooting a bound prisoner. L. said he thought he had received an order to shoot. ‘As a result of the shooting, Abu Rahme suffered superficial injuries on his left toe, was treated by a medic and did not require further care’, the chief prosecutor, Colonel Liron Liebman, wrote in the original indictment”. This Haaretz article can be read in full here.

Abu Rahme fainted dead away from sheer terror.

The Jerusalem Post reported, here, that “Lt.-Col. Omri Burbag, commander of Armored Battalion 71, was caught on video leading the
blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian to a military jeep, where the soldier was then seen raising his weapon and discharging a shot. The soldier claimed that Burbag had ordered him to fire, but the officer told investigators that all he had told the soldier to do was ’shake his gun’ to scare the detainee. The prisoner was wounded in his foot. Burbag had initially been charged by Military Advocate- General Brig.-Gen. Avichai Mandelblit with inappropriate military conduct, a lesser charge, which prompted
human rights groups to petition the High Court of Justice. Mandelblit added threats and behavior unbefitting a commander to the charge sheet, and he was convicted of these on Thursday. On Thursday, the judges wrote in their decision that Burbag’s conduct constituted a serious deviation from IDF norms and values. ‘This detracts from the standing of the IDF, its commanders and soldiers’, the judges wrote in their decision”.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

Norman Finkelstein joins us in the studio to report that one should judge the alleged "peace process" with results, not rhetoric. Obama has certainly given enough lip service to settlement moratoriums, proximity talks, and direct talks, but what are the results? Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, there are three times as many settlers and Israel has annexed 42% of Palestinian land for even more expansion. Though Obama waxes eloquently about "direct negotiations," there are no signs of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders that would only begin to indicate a successful peace process.

Article from GRITtv read more here

Norman Finkelstein joins us in the studio to report that one should judge the alleged "peace process" with results, not rhetoric. Obama has certainly given enough lip service to settlement moratoriums, proximity talks, and direct talks, but what are the results?

The Obama administration set up a clash with Arizona over the state's immigration bill, SB 1070, this week when it filed suit in federal court claiming that the law is a breach of federal authority.  The law goes into effect later this month and would allow law enforcement officials to stop anyone on suspicion of being undocumented.

In the wake of SB 1070's passage, states around the country have initiated copycat bills and other legislation aimed at cracking down on immigration. But in addition to the Holder Justice Department's lawsuit, progressive state legislators are fighting back on the state level, and activists are pushing for commonsense immigration bills on both a state and federal level. We are joined by Arizona state legislator Kyrsten Sinema and Suman Raghunathan of the Progressive States Network to discuss the ongoing fight.

Finally, inspired by the film Winter Bone, Laura has some thoughts about the military, the economy, and what happens when we bring home thousands of soliders in need of new jobs.

Article from GRITtv read more here

Here is one of the most dismal pieces of information in the report: “The Barrier gate opening times pose potential health risks for the thousands of farmers who enter their land in the ‘Seam Zone’ on a daily or seasonal basis. The majority of gates open for brief periods, two to three times daily: only two Barrier gates out of 13 open continuously throughout the day. As the gates
are locked and unstaffed by soldiers between these short opening times, a widespread anxiety among farmers is that in the event of a work accident, snake bite or pesticide inhalation, they are unable to leave the ‘Seam Zone.’ Unless they succeed in attracting the attention of the military patrol which controls the gates (or communicate through the Humanitarian Hotline to the DCL – Israeli District Coordination Liaison Office) they are stuck until the next opening time, without access to first aid or emergency care. Restrictions on vehicles passing through the Barrier gates means that an injured person needs to be
transported by horse, mule or tractor to the gates, which often necessitates a long detour over rugged terrain. The farmers’ anxiety is compounded by the realization that access restrictions to the ‘Seam Zone’ also prevent the entry of health professionals and ambulances from assisting those in need of medical care. (See OCHA oPt, ‘Five Years after the International
Court of Justice Advisory Opinion’, July 2009, p. 36, for the case of a farmer who severed his fingers with a chainsaw while working in the closed are behind the Barrier)…

Here is some background, from the OCHA report: “In summer 2002, following a campaign of suicide bombings by Palestinian militants, the Government of Israel approved construction of a Barrier to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel. The Barrier’s total length is 707 km, more than twice the length of the 1949 Armistice Line (Green Line) between the West Bank and Israel. Approximately 61.4% of the 707-kilometre-long Barrier is complete; a further 8.4% is under construction and 30.1% is planned but not yet constructed. When completed,the majority of the route, approximately 85%, will run inside the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, rather than along the Green Line. The total area located between the Barrier and the Green Line amounts to 9.4% of the West Bank,including East Jerusalem and No Man’s land … Since the last OCHA Barrier report [one year ago], construction of new sections has almost completely halted as a result of a number of financial constraints, concerns
raised by the international community and lack of demand by Israeli society. Most of the recent construction involved re-routings ordered by the Israeli High Court of Justice (HCJ). In addition, new construction has taken place in the north of East Jerusalem and in the northwest of Bethlehem governorate.
…
“According to one journalist, citing an IDF source, the entire Barrier ‘is not slated to be completed until 2020 – in other words, 18 years after the Sharon government decided to put it into action.’ Hanan Greenburg, ‘IDF estimates security fence to be completed in 2020’, Israel News, 2 March 2010. The cost of the entire project is unknown but according to a recent estimate, the Barrier ‘has cost NIS 7 billion thus far. The total cost …once it is completed, will reach NIS 11 billion in the best case scenario’.”

That’s nearly $2 billion U.S. dollars spent so far, and the total cost will be nearly $3 billion U.S. dollars.

One particular feature of this Wall is the “Seam Zone” regime — people trapped between The Wall [which OCHA calls a Barrier and the border, or the Green Line, or a checkpoint.

This OCHA report says: “approximately 7,800 Palestinians reside in the closed area between the Barrier and the Green Line. Those aged 16 and above require permanent resident permits from the Israeli authorities to continue to live in their homes. Residents have to pass through Barrier checkpoints to reach workplaces and essential services, and to maintain family and social relations on the ‘Palestinian’ side of the Barrier. Few health and education services are available in the closed area … The Barrier has also adversely affected the access of the entire population to urban areas, in particular East Jerusalem, whose six non-government hospitals are the main providers of routine, emergency, secondary and tertiary care for Palestinian from the West Bank and Gaza Strip”.

Article from UN-Truth read more here

This is being described as a “significant easing” of the system that has been in place around Gaza.

The lists are published here, and they are:
List no. 1: Items Subject to Specific Permission – (a) arms and munitions, or (b) dual-use items [those "liable to be used, side by side with their civilian purposes, for the development, production, installation or enhancement of military capabilities and terrorist capacities" - in this list of dual-use items, Israel is incorporating a list developed by countries who have voluntarily joined something called the Wassenaar Arrangements [see here for more information], plus the Control of Exports Security Order (Controlled Dual Use Equipment Transferred to the PA Areas) 5768-2008, and an additional number of items banned by specific Israeli military orders issued by the Israeli Defense Forces Central Command headquarters].
List No. 2: Construction Items and Materials – to be Allowed Entry into Gaza only for (a) PA-authorized Projects that are (b) implemented and monitored by the international community.

[There are some items that are not allowed into the West Bank, either -- but the control system is not - yet - what it is in Gaza.]

Everything else is supposed to be permitted.

IDF spokesperson’s unit video of U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell, visiting the Kerem Shalom control point on 30 June

According to the IDF video, George Mitchell said to the cameras and microphones:  “This is part of an ongoing effort … In addition to pursuing the proximity talks, I welcome this opportunity to visit Kerem Shalom … These arrangements should significantly improve conditions for Palestinians in Gaza. I saw firsthand today that progress is being made … Israel has legitimate security concerns. The U.S. strongly reaffirms Israel’s right to self-defense and we support international efforts to prevent the trafficking of arms and ammunition into Gaza. We’re standing not far from the place where Gilad Shalit was abducted. He soon enters his fourth year of captivity by Hamas. His continued captivity is deplorable and unacceptable. We condemn his detention … + the inhumane conditions in which he is held, including Hamas’ refusal to provide access to him by the ICRC”…

Sari Bashi, director of the Israeli human rights organization GISHA, who has worked with a group of other Israeli and Palestinian groups in the Israeli Supreme Court to repeal what she calls the collective punishment of 1.5 million civilians in Gaza, and then more recently filed a Freedom of Information petition asking what, exactly, was allowed into Gaza [and what criteria were used to decide] told journalists in Jerusalem today that “cement is not on that [Wassenaar] list — there is nothing dangerous about cement”.

Cement is prohibited by the Israeli internal legislation mentioned [above] by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs — except for projects “implemented and monitored” by the UN. That is not enough, Bashi said, either for private consumers or businesses — though, she noted, Hamas right now is able to get cement through the tunnels dug under Gaza’s border with Egypt at Rafah.

The new regulations do not yet permit any exports from Gaza, she noted.

And, “at this point, no raw materials are being allowed in” either, she said — certainly not in bulk.

And, she expressed concern about the shutting down of most other crossings that have been used in the past for transfer of goods to Gaza — leaving only one crossing still functioning, Kerem Shalom, the southernmost one, at the point where the borders of Gaza, Egypt, and Sinai meet. This, she said, “limits the connection between the West Bank and Gaza”, and it poses a risk that if that one crossing is closed down for any reason, “then Gaza is completely cut off”.

Bashi also said that “in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, Israeli agreed to redundancy of crossings, but since 2007 this has been reversed, and Israel has been progressively closing crossings”.

“What we need is, indeed, a security-based regime”, Bashi noted, “international law allows the occupying power to control what goes into an area — subject only to concrete security checks”.

When the Freedom Flotilla sailed [and then was subject to an Israeli Navy assault at sea], Bashi noted” “Israel said ‘we need to be secure, so we must stop and check the ships’. That was accepted by the international community, and it’s fine under international law, but that’s not where we’re headed. So we are asking the international community to insist on consistency — it should ask that the policy be based only on security criteria”.

Bashi said the Government plan, “if they are to be believed, would allow only 70 percent of what Gaza received in 2005 — that would be 250 truckloads a day through Kerem Shalom, and 120 truckloads of materials would cross on a conveyor belt at the otherwise-closed Karni crossing. That would be a maximum of 7,700 truckloads a month”, whereas in 2005 some 10,400 truckloads entered Gaza per month.

An information sheet just published by GISHA states that “restrictions continue to apply to items that could be used for industry and manufacturing and on goods with no apparent security correlation. In that sense, despite the promise of facilitating economic activity in Gaza, there does not yet appear to be a change in the policy of inflicting ‘economic warfare’ on Gaza by preventing entry of goods necessary for production”.

The information sheet also said that “it is not clear how the current operational capacity of the crossings, as Israel is allowing them to operate, can meet demand”.

UN officials have said that pre-2007-siege deliveries to Gaza via Israeli crossings were between 400 and 600 truckloads a day, for 1.5 million people. And, GISHA’s position paper indicates that pre-2007-siege exports from Gaza averaged 400 truckloads a day.

And, the GISHA paper said, “movement of people remains limited to ‘humanitarian’ cases and employees of international organizations [n.b. - and non-Israeli journalists accredited by the Israeli Government Press Office] all indications point to continued and severe movement restrictions between Gaza and the West Bank”.

As the AP’s Karin Laub noted in a report from Kerem Shalom, “the new rules are unlikely to restore the territory’s devastated economy or allow rebuilding of all that was destroyed in last year’s war”. She reported that among the goods that showed up today at Kerem Shalom were washing machines, and mattresses — items previously banned. She quoted GISHA’s Sari Bashi as saying: “Gaza residents can now purchase Israeli-made products, but they are still prevented from engaging in dignified, productive work and from traveling”. This is posted here.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense’s Coordinator of [Israeli] Government Activities in the [Palestinian] territories, or COGAT, has put out a document, entitled “The Civilian Policy Towards the Gaza Strip – implementation of the Cabinet Decision (June 2010)”. It says that “The adjustment of the civilian aspects of Israel’s policy regarding the Gaza Strip began in early 2010″, and it says that what is going on now is “liberalizing the system by which civilian goods enter Gaza”.

The COGAT document states that “In accordance with the Security Cabinet’s decision (20th June 2010), the civilian aspects of Israel’s policy regarding the Gaza Strip were adjusted, in order to provide relief to the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, while preventing the entry of weapons and other materials that can be used by the Hamas terror regime to harm the citizens of the State of Israel”. It can be viewed in full here.

Israeli media reports suggested that how to get these items into Gaza was the subject of discussion when Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak — who rules the occupied Palestinian territory — and Palestinian appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad met this afternoon at the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem.

(The Palestinians tried to put a different spin on the meeting, saying that Fayyad demanded the cessation of all “unilateral actions in Jerusalem” and cancellation of Israeli “deportation” orders for four Palestinian politicians from East Jerusalem who were elected in January 2006 to the Palestinian Legislative Council, or PLC, on the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform Party ticket.)

Article from UN-Truth read more here

Salim, who has been teaching for a semester at Georgetown University, writes in his introductory that “Rema Hammami’s pioneering work on Qalandia (the Palestinian Tora Bora)[this is explained in Part Two of this story -- it refers to the stone quarry which is the only alternative route around when Qalandia becomes a real hell-hole] takes an ethnographic look at Israel’s regime of checkpoints and barriers within a global context of ‘policing inequalities’. In particular she examines the politics of security, which ‘creates myopia, blindness to the very facts it engenders’. Her essay also examines the creative forces of survival among its victims. In her work the carnavalesque atmosphere of market and circus that permeates ‘border’ zones like Qalandia (and Surda before it), both camouflage and underscore the misery created by the security regime behind it”….
Salim’s editorial can be read in full here.

Reema’s long analysis [Qalandiya: Jerusalem’s Tora Bora and the Frontiers of Global Inequality] tries — almost journalistically, though she probably wouldn’t like to hear it — to describe the infernal atmosphere.

You have to know the place to understand, however, that she is walking, and not driving, through the checkpoint, and that she is describing the passage going from the Ramallah side to Jerusalem –
“Heat, wind, dust, garbage. Cars stuck in line, jammed bumper to bumper – probably a two-hour wait. I squeeze through the few inches between an articulated lorry and the next car. On the other side is a porter shifting two television sets tied to his cart weaving in between the oncoming traffic. Ramallah, Ramallah Ramallah, the calls of a van organizer. I shake my head – and point toward the checkpoint. Up through the first set of blocks, the wind blows up white dust from the quarry, the peddlers clutch their sun umbrellas. I pick up my pace, it’s rush hour. Through the second row of blocks and I can see the crowd up ahead, spilling out from under the zinc roof and concrete pens of the crossing. I reach them and ask an old man, how long he’s been waiting: ‘From the time I was born’…

Reema Hammami’s article continues: ” ‘Open the way, I have children, where’s the women’s line?’ A mother is overwhelmed with a toddler, a baby and a heavy shoulder bag. ‘There’s no women’s line today, just chaos’, replies a young woman ‘Did they close it?’ A new arrival asks anxiously. ‘We can’t tell’. Comes the collective response. There are maybe 300 people here waiting to cross – too many to be able to see what’s happening up front and more people keep piling up behind us. ‘For God’s sake stop pushing’ – shouts a young woman, ‘it’s enough what we’ve got in front of us. Something sharp jabs my back and I turn – the man looks at me apologetically hugging the culprit – his briefcase. Slowly the crowd are becoming lines up to the turnstyles, but I can’t tell which one I’m in yet. I ask the man in front of me if he thinks this is the line for blue I.D.’s today. ‘You’ll only know when it’s the wrong one’. We’re close enough to hear the soldiers now. ‘Irja, Irja‘ – ‘go back go back’ the screeching voice of a woman soldier. ‘Ta’al, ta’al‘ – ‘come forward, come forward’. We finally get close to our turnstile and beyond it is a glum looking teenage soldier leaning against the side chewing gum. The man in front of me shows his orange I.D. card and the soldier says ‘tasriiich (permit). over there’, laconically gesturing to the last line. The man looks modest but respectable like a school teacher; he’s probably older than the soldier’s father. He starts arguing politely in broken English. The soldier, disinterested shakes his head – ‘Over there, permit’. The man’s shoulders slump, it means a lot of pushing and shoving across two lines. He moves closer to the turnstile and gives another try of patient explaining. The soldier snaps and lunges towards him, shouting ‘Itlaa, itlaa’ – ‘get out, get out’ – their [the Israeli soldiers'] third Arabic vocabulary word. The man backs -off, mumbling under his breath and starts to negotiate his way through to the next line”.
…

Then, a brief history –

[She writes that the checkpoint started in 2001, but I saw it start in 2000, with two Israeli soldiers and a little further north, towards Ramallah, two Palestinian soldiers, then that all changed, and the Palestinian traffic simply diverted up a dusty hill towards Qafr Aqab, and drove around through broken local streets around the Israeli soldiers, avoiding problems -- and the Israelis knew very well, but don't care, because the whole point was just to make things difficult for the Palestinians..]
“The checkpoint itself started in 2001 as a few soldiers behind sandbags and concrete blocks who intermittently stopped people traveling on the road. Over the next four years it became a continuous work in progress, as it expanded into an evermore stringent and permanent series of barricades. Until finally it has taken over a few square kilometres of the landscape where a fully-fledged high-tech [this, I would say, is an exaggeration, and I would have used the word claustrophobic] ‘terminal’ has been installed which is a main crossing point in the Separation Wall, that has been built across the original road. During that time not only has its physical structure been in a constant process of change – the rules of who, what and how to cross have been in a permanent state of flux. In the first period everyone could cross after an identity check, then only private cars and pedestrians could, and at times, only pedestrians. This was followed by the most
restrictive period when no West Bank identity card holders could cross south. Then they could only if they were a woman or a child under 14, or were over 60, then over 50, or 14 and had permits and on and on. And even within the overall ‘rule structure’ of whom or what could cross during a particular period – there was always the individual whim of the soldier – as suggested in my diary description at the opening of this paper. What checkpoints create is not pure immobility, but immense chaos. Although the IDF calls Qalandiya an ‘isolation checkpoint’ [???] and its often described as separating Ramallah from Jerusalem, it actually lies 10 kilometers inside the West Bankand sits across the main road artery that runs through the once continuous Palestinian suburbs that run from Ramallah all the way through East Jerusalem. But the main reason for where it is located is that it sits on a larger strategic crossroads – a point at which the main North South artery in the West Bank crosses the main East-West artery. Thus within the overall spatial regime (varying between 450 and 650 roadblocks and checkpoints), Qalandiya has not just divided East Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterlands, but has completely isolated a number of surrounding communities from each other, while serving as a strategic bottleneck for the larger population needing to move from one side of the West Bank to the other’…

Warped strategies of adaptation –
Reema Hammami’s article continues: “But this description barely begins to address what Qalandiya has accomplished. Manuel Castells has called modern societies ‘network societies” – they depend on complex networks of information, people and goods that connect through space. Thus, the checkpoint created not simply a problem of movement for people and goods, but was akin to a tectonic explosion that caused a massive web of ruptures across infinite networks of social and economic relations all across the West Bank. As such, more important than the finite impact of goods not reaching their markets or students their schools was the wider devastation caused by the ruptures of the complex circuits through which the host of social relations flow and circulates that make among other things, commerce and education possible. An immediate response to the imposition of this devastation by checkpoints is therefore attempts to re-organize those shattered circuits that make the operation of regular life possible. And the place to begin this is at the very epicenter in which they were shattered and where chaos is most concentrated and emanates from. Thus the main thing that is needed is new ways to try and re-impose order from chaos – new systems to re-organize those shattered networks in systematic and regularized types of ways – either enabling people and goods to go through the checkpoint or around it. The official Palestinian authorities cannot do this, because their criminalization is part of what the checkpoint geography represents. Thus throughout the occupied territories it has been informal networks that have stepped in to fill the breach – either of informal sector workers or of local communities. At checkpoints everywhere this happens at first spontaneously and in piece meal ways, then over time what I have called ‘checkpoint workers’ build more sophisticated ways of organizing themselves to create order for the larger populace. At Qalandiya this was an immense challenge because the magnitude of chaos was so much greater due to the sheer scale of the population needing to cross and thus the diversity of needs that had to be addressed. It was as if overnight you have to create an urban infrastructure for a constantly changing socio-scape of more than 20,000 people”…

Qalandia checkpoint as creator of a humanitarian crisis –
“Though of similar scale, it is a much more complicated project than what confronts aid agencies in a ‘humanitarian crisis’, because here you must create an infrastructure to actually sustain a population’s mobility at the very site in which a powerful system has been imposed in order to block it. Thus this immense project must be done subversively because if it is done in direct confrontation – it will simply be defeated. [Here, the author seems to suggest that the Israelis don't know what is being done to try to circumvent the chaos at Qalandia: but this is simply not true. They know, they watch, they tolerate the efforts to overcome all the humiliation and indignity, until they suddenly stop tolerating it, without warning. Reema Hammami seems to ignore the fact that the creation of uncertainty, and the lack of information, is one of the intrinsic hallmarks of this occupation...]

“Everywhere, the first chaos a checkpoint creates is in public transport systems. The backbone of Palestinian public transport is ten-seater predominantly owner-operated vans [these are privately-owned Ford Transits, if you ever saw the film of that name by Hany Abu Assad] that are licensed to work a prescribed route under a local taxi office. When routes are cut, the logic of standardized destinations and who can ply them completely breaks down. At Qalandiya, overnight, vans could no longer cross and continue their old routes – to more than thirty destinations on either side of the checkpoint thus creating a choke point where drivers were forced to drop passengers and leave them to seek a way to finish their journey on the other side. Soon [often, and daily] the roads on either side were clogged in the chaos of transit vans and cars unable to go forward and unable to turn. Then the disorder worsens as transit vans from all over the area move in to try and help commuters finish their journey from this sudden point of blockage. While anger and frustration reigns for all, for transport drivers their very livelihoods become threatened. Thus, a few months into the imposition of the checkpoint, in an attempt to restore order so as to guarantee their livelihoods, informal networks from the [Qalandia] refugee camp and among transport workers stepped in to organize what had now became a major transport hub – or in fact to create dual hubs – to deal with each side of the checkpoint. The next group who stepped in were porters. Either because vehicles couldn’t cross, or it took too long waiting to cross by vehicle, porters with three wheeled wooden carts came to move everything from travellers luggage, to commercial goods and even the entire mail of the Ramallah post office across the checkpoint. [n.b. - I'm not sure Palestinian mail crosses in or out of Israel anymore, only via private companies like Aramex...]

And simultaneous with these first two groups mobile vendors entered onto the scene. The first were those who made canteens for the other checkpoint workers, kebab and coffee sellers for drivers and porters. And then other opportunities were spied and new niches created. In the summer: water, sunglasses, sunhats and ice-cream for pedestrians, in the winter umbrellas, woolen hats and hot drinks. And soon enough you had hundreds of vendors plying an infinite variety of goods at what was affectionately called – the ‘Qalandiya Duty Free’. These were the occupational networks that moved in, but the surrounding communities, either collectively or individually also played their role. The camp community played host – to hundreds of released prisoners dumped at the checkpoint by the military in the middle of the night miles away from their homes. From its ranks came doctors and first aid workers to treat the sick and injured. Every forty days of Ramadan, camp youth distributed water and dates to commuters stuck in line during the breaking of the fast. And the community even provided a final resting place in their cemetery – for a young woman whose family couldn’t get her body back home to Tulkarem because the checkpoint was sealed shut. The owner of one of the quarries, continually donated gravel and the services of his bulldozer to keep creating a stand for the 300 odd transit vans that needed a stand. And the al-Ram community twice received hundreds of commuters into their homes when they became stuck on that side of the checkpoint under a sudden curfew”….

To be continued…

Reema Hammami’s article on Qalandia can be read in full here.

Article from UN-Truth read more here