At the a-Ram checkpoint, the largest IDF roadblock at the northern entrance to Jerusalem, a car drives on the Israeli side and parks on the side of the road. Two women, Ronnee Jaeger and Maya Blum, pin on identification badges that identify them as volunteers for MachsomWatch — machsom being Hebrew for checkpoint — and approach the three border policemen who have been on duty for several hours.
“Shalom. We are from MachsomWatch,” explains Jaeger, a 61-year-old feminist and human rights activist, to the surprised young conscripts.
MachsomWatch has prepared a flyer, which the women hand out to the three young men:
“Shalom, soldier or policeman,” the flyer reads in part. “MachsomWatch is a group of women who conduct observations at the checkpoints. Our purpose is to watch and document, not only the exceptions, but also the daily routine at the checkpoints.”
As the two women watch, the policemen stop cars and vans with Palestinian license plates crossing into Israeli territory. The policemen raise their hands, a bit listlessly, and the Palestinians, familiar with the drill, roll down their windows. M-16s slung over their shoulders, the policemen push their heads through the window, demanding to see ID cards, scanning the passengers. Occasionally, they pull a car over and cursorily check the trunk, or write down the license plate and ID numbers.
Jaeger and Blum stand quietly, carefully noting down everything they see on MachsomWatch forms. They don’t engage anyone in conversation, but it is hard not to notice them — two Jewish women, with hats, water bottles and clipboards, standing on the side of a garbage-strewn road, just meters from the drab-green military watchtower with a fluttering Israeli flag, barbed wire, sandbags and portable toilets. Some of the Palestinians smile or nod as they pass them.
Since the outbreak of the current violence in late September last year, human rights workers have taken down testimonies or witnessed dozens of incidents in which Palestinians were beaten or abused by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints.
The IDF has also put dozens of Palestinian villages and towns under what they call “internal closure” — cutting the village off with deep trenches and huge concrete boulders, so that no vehicles can enter or exit.
To move from place to place, Palestinians must scramble, on foot, through hills, fields and unpaved roads. Unemployed Palestinians, desperate to find some work to feed their families, plead, wheedle and cajole the soldiers at the checkpoints, trying to convince them to let them into Israel. Tired, dusty and overwhelmed soldiers try to keep them back. The tension is palpable.
“If you haven’t been there, you can’t imagine what it’s like,” says a reservist who recently served at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem. “For eight hours, you have to stand there, checking Palestinians, listening to their stories. Sure, I know soldiers who’ve beaten Palestinians, or punctured their tires, or kept them waiting in the sun,” he continues. “After eight hours of duty at a checkpoint, sometimes you just lose control.”
Recent media reports have accused soldiers of beating up Palestinians at checkpoints, forcing people who wanted to cross into Israel to stand in the scorching sun for hours and demanding that they “pay taxes” of cigarettes and soft drinks.
The army responds that such incidents are the exceptions to the tens of thousands of Palestinians who routinely pass through the checkpoints every day. But for Jaeger, these incidents are “the true face of the occupation.”
Every day in the past few months, Jaeger and a group of some 50 like-minded women take up a position at one of the checkpoints. Most often, they stand quietly, carefully recording all that they see. Sometimes, if they see soldiers acting violently or particularly rudely or if they observe what they believe is an infringement of a Palestinian’s human rights, they will try to intervene.
After an hour at the a-Ram roadblock, Jaeger and Blum agree that this checkpoint is quiet today, and they decide to continue on to the Kalandiya checkpoint, further to the north, near the now-defunct Atarot airport. They cross the road, skirting the sandbags and the cars, and hail a Palestinian cab.
The checkpoint at Kalandiya is bigger, with more reinforcements, supervised by half a dozen reservists. Blum approaches one of them. There’s more traffic here, but at least half of the cars have plates issued by the Palestinian Authority and are traveling between Palestinian towns and villages. There has been shooting here recently, and the soldiers are wearing helmets and flak jackets and carrying their weapons more deliberately.
But the soldiers hardly stop anyone, and, after another hour or so, Jaeger and Blum go home.
Jaeger is pleased. The border policemen and soldiers hadn’t opposed their presence, hadn’t threatened them and hadn’t tried to prevent them from doing their work. More importantly, it had been a quiet few hours, the soldiers were matter-of-fact and no one was hurt or abused.
It isn’t always so easy, she says.
Adi Kuntsman, 28, a leader of the group, recalls an incident at the IDF checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem at the southern entrance into Jerusalem.
“When I came on duty, there were about a dozen Palestinian men and women standing against a wall. They’d been standing like that, in the hot sun, with no shade and nothing to drink, for two or three hours. The soldiers said that they were really busy and hadn’t had time to check their ID cards. The cards were all in a pile on the table, and they were all blue [indicating that the holder has the right to enter Jerusalem].
“But suddenly, when we appeared, the soldiers found the time to check the papers and let them go,” Kuntsman continues. “Was it because we came on the scene? I don’t know, but at least the people were allowed to get out of the sun.”
In a report issued last month, the human rights group B’tselem documented eight cases in which Palestinians in need of medical treatment were denied passage through checkpoints. Two of the Palestinians died.
The IDF says it is investigating those incidents, and has repeatedly stated that the soldiers have standing orders to allow Palestinians in need of emergency medical treatment to pass through the checkpoints.
Soldiers at the checkpoints, said a senior IDF officer, are a cross-section of Israeli society. “Most of them are regular guys. But some of them are mean and nasty or even sadistic. They should be punished, but the IDF really hasn’t pursued the complaints very carefully or diligently. No one really cares that much.”
Soldiers’ responses to the MachsomWatch volunteers vary. A 22-year-old reservist says he appreciates their presence. “Sometimes, after too many hours, you start to lose control. It’s good that they’re there, to remind you to be a ben adam [human being].”
Another reservist doesn’t agree. MachsomWatch volunteers were present several times while he was handling the checkpoint.
“We know that you’re supposed to let medical emergencies go through. But you have to check ambulances because the Palestinians can fake medical papers. We’re trying to do our jobs and these women interfere.
“I feel for them,” responds Jaeger. “They are young men with guns and too much power, and that is a horrible combination.” Most Israelis believe that the checkpoints are intended to prevent terrorists from entering into Israel.
“That’s ridiculous,” responds Kuntsman. “It’s pretty clear that Israel tightens the closure to punish the Palestinians and eases it up to make ‘gestures’ when it wants to. And, anyway, what terrorist would just put the explosives in his trunk and try to drive through a checkpoint?”
“The checkpoints may be the least effective measure we have, but at least they do help to decrease the threat that a suicide bomber would come into Israel,” says one IDF officer. “They aren’t foolproof, but they are not useless. Given the security threats that we face, we can’t abandon even this imperfect measure.”
But Gideon Ezra, Likud deputy minister for internal security and a former Shin Bet official, concedes that the checkpoints are, by and large, ineffective.
“After all, in order for the checkpoints to be useful, the security forces would have to check every individual, every car, at every point along the entire seam between Israel and the territories. That’s just not possible.”
So what do the checkpoints accomplish?
“Without them,” Ezra responds, “we Israelis would feel naked.”
According to the women of MachsomWatch, the checkpoints have only one real purpose. “They’re not there to provide security,” says Kuntsman. “They’re there to humiliate the Palestinian population, to make them afraid. To make sure that they know who’s boss, who’s in control.”