Friends have told us about a spot close to the Israeli town of Modi'in where detainees are brought after being released and left there, usually in the evening or at night, when they have no way of getting home. We saw a road blocked by several concrete slabs, and next to them were taxi drivers and an army jeep. And we stopped. When the soldiers saw us filming them they left, and shortly afterward we learned they had gone to shoot inside the village. We also learned that just before we got there the soldiers had beaten the taxi drivers under one pretext or another as they are wont to do as a matter of routine. This was around 5 p.m. and the taxi drivers were waiting for workers coming back from work in Israel. We learned from them that this is indeed the place where the detainees are thrown, and about what happens across the road every day before dawn, except Saturdays.
They said come and have a look. And we came.

Beit Sira Checkpoint, the western checkpoint on road 443, near the blocked entrance to Beit Sira village, Makabim Checkpoint as the army calls it.

4 a.m.. It is pitch dark. Takes a moment to get used to it. Then we see people. All men. Emerging from the dark and through it and beside us along the road. More and more. Individuals, here and there two together. Dozens of men. Each holding a plastic bag or box that looks like a lunch box. Some with woolen caps or hoods. No sideward looks. They walk rapidly, their backs leaning forward, intent, their eyes withdrawn. These men are not young, and it is a strange. Road 443 is deserted but for an occasional truck that speeds through the dark, and an occasional taxi rushing along the dark, empty road. In the center of the road, lit with some metallic sheen, stands Makabim Checkpoint, the checkpoint of Beit Sira.

First we stood on the south side of the road, by the square concrete slabs that block access to Beit Sira and the other villages of the area. Total darkness. Everything looks deserted. Suddenly a light appears and a van arrives. Some men descend quickly and begin to walk. Determined. Bent forward. A plastic bag in one hand. The van turns around and disappears into the dark, and then another.

No one looks at us, or to the sides. They walk behind one another, or pass each other by, wordlessly. We followed.

On the northern side of the road and of the checkpoint, a bare field, and in the distance, about 200 meters from the road, there is a shed. Outside several dozen men stand crowded in what appears to be a waiting line. Nearby, about ten meters away, some men stand around, their rounded backs creating a circle, their shoulders hunched against the cold, they rub their hands together. The time is some minute past 4 a.m. Silence. We approached. They immediately made room for us. We greeted them. They answered our greeting.

F. from Beit Sira explained that this whole checkpoint, the lit part on the road, and the part with the shed through which workers with jobs in Israel get inspected, are actually one and the same checkpoint, that he and his friends call Beit Sira CP. This crossing is only for workers, he says. Anyone who is not a worker and has no permit will not be let through. Once someone was very badly hurt in a traffic accident just beside them. The soldiers would not let him through. They said it was only for workers. Only whoever has a work permit.

Road 443 is located on the lands of Palestinian villages in the area that have been confiscated years ago, when the road was built. And it was actually built for their own use, too. Or so they were told. Now for the past few years all Palestinian residents of the region, except for a very few, are prohibited to travel this road, and the access roads from the villages to the road are all blocked with concrete slabs. As there is no entry to Jerusalem, Ramallah is the only place in the region to go to for hospital, pharmacy, garage or university, anything really. When the road was still accessible to Palestinians they could reach Ramallah in about a quarter-of-an-hour. Now they have to travel a potholed back road through six or seven villages, and the trip takes about an hour-and-a-half.
Since it has been forbidden to cross or travel road 443, women have given birth in taxis, had stillbirths, people have died on the way, and chronic patients waste away at home. Some of the villages have petitioned the High Court of Justice about the matter lately, and since then the army's routine harassment has gotten worse.

Everyone on the spot already arrived at 3 a.m., or half past, to save a place in the waiting line that will open around 5, quarter past. He will be standing there for at least an hour, hopefully. Usually longer. And then, hoping he will be permitted to proceed into Israel, to work. Most of them hold work permits valid from 5 a.m. to seven pm. Few hold a twenty-four hour permit. They are all over thirty years old. Most are older. All have permits and a Jewish employer who has requested to have them work for him. Who waits for them to come to work.

I am old, says one, and I have a job. I have three sons in their twenties, they have little children, they don't work at all. He speaks very quietly. They stand quietly. Holding their lunch boxes and bags. Although they stand for a long time, they place nothing on the ground. Hardly talk to each other. And it is strange.

The shed is about twenty meters long. People stand outside. And wait. Usually for hours. When one person approaches the shed he faces several stairs, still outside. And then when he is summoned inside, he enters. Inside the shed there is a metal-detector. Each of them has to pass it and then reach a high cubicle with the soldiers' checking posts. The man has to hold out his ID and permit up for the soldier to see, usually on tiptoe, and get his final okay to cross. Then go back towards road 443, to the other side of the checkpoint where vans stand waiting, or the employers themselves.

Two soldiers, a man and a woman, approach Tamar. Would you stop filming?
No, she answered.
-I have no problem with your being here, said the woman soldier. That's cool. But not here, stand over there.
No, says Tamar. There's no reason. And continues to film.
-Sure there's a reason, it's a closed military area. You must not stand here.
No problem, show us the order signed by the regional general commander.
-You can't stand here. I've spoken to my officer.
Sorry, he's wrong.
-He's not wrong. I just spoke to him.
I tell you he should go find out. I want to see the closed military order signed by a general.
-Fine, no problem. I'll get it. And don't film me.

The soldier goes off to make a phone call. Tamar continues filming.

They posted one more soldier for the checking, someone comments wondering. That's when we get observers here, the UN, he says. Or a senior officer. Come every day…
We looked at the checking posts. Instead of one soldier checking there are now two. The woman soldier who forbade us to film earlier and promised she'd bring the signed order is now helping out with the checks.
Apparently instead of giving her the signed order which no one there has to give, she was told to go stand there and take part in the inspections, it would look good in the pictures.

Well – certainly not good.

An officer arrives. Probably the checkpoint commander, with his typical antenna.
- Give me your data, he says.
Bring a police officer, we say. We'll show him our papers.
- What?
Not you.
-You have to show me, too.
No, I don't. Get the police. Tell them to tell us.
-You know you're in some danger here as well.
We sure know that. Thank you. From you. We feel endangered but not by whom you think.

It is still dark. More men keep arriving. And joining the slowly moving waiting line. That now contains hundreds of people in a long queue that disappears in the dark, ranged single file.
Someone turns and says, all of a sudden: When a little boy throws a stone, they talk about it everywhere. Here thousands of people stand in the bitter cold, and no one says a thing about it. They stand in the rain. There's no shelter. The sheds are just for soldiers. Sometimes there are three, four hundred people standing in the rain. If we move, they get angry.
Today is okay.
When we talk, they shut us up. Don't talk! As if we're children.
Bring television crews. Come here every day.
The line – shorter than usual according to the people standing in it – gradually grows longer. The silence is a bit less penetrating. Some people smoke. Talk with each other more.

Two weeks ago people didn't get along because the soldiers were doing everything very slowly. Making fun of us. Then soldiers hit people in line with their rifle butts.

5:18 a.m. People hurry off to the side. Some stay in line. People kneel for prayer. I don't know from where they suddenly got pieces of cardboard, perhaps they had prepared them in advance, perhaps they're kept in some corner somewhere. Some hand them over to each other. They kneel together and pray. Heads bobbing up and down over the cardboard. After a while, one of them begins to lead the prayer, standing ahead of the others, and they all follow.

A man dressed in red loosens up and talks. Apparently they are no longer afraid to talk in line. Less are seen gazing sideways in concern. I'm from Hebron, not from here. But what can we do? Gotta work. He says there are many like him, from elsewhere. Nablus and Jenin. They rent places in this area. For example, himself and four other fellows from Hebron rented a two-room flat about 100 meters from the checkpoint. They pay two thousand NIS a month for it. And that's a lot. Once a week, on Saturday, they go home. Two and a half hours each way. They have to be back on Saturday in order to stand in line at 3:30 a.m. to get to work. This is no life, he said.

Someone lit a small campfire and several men stand around it, encircling as if to hide it, warming their hands.
As time passes, the fire grows.

At the brightly-lit checkpoint on the road, a police car stops. Perhaps that is why the topic suddenly came up. Every two-three days, they tell us, interrupting each other, a policeman comes and hides off the road (they show us exactly where) and fines anyone crossing the road. For the inevitable crossing of the road. Because there is no pedestrian crossing. And nowhere else where Palestinians from the Occupied Territories may cross the road. None. Only there.
Fines are 100-250 NIS each.

There is one spot where the road can be crossed underneath. Near Kharbata. A kind of tunnel under the road. That's where they used to cross in order to avoid getting fined. But now it has been made inaccessible.

Everywhere we look we see money being stolen from Palestinians with an industriousness that is absolutely terrifying.

I was given a 200 NIS fine, someone says. Where am I going to get that kind of money? Half of my workday wages is spent on transportation. 25 NIS each way just to get to work. Some spend even more. Half goes to feed the children. And then I get this fine. Where can we cross? How can we pay? It is all intentional. Sometimes people who get fined lose their permit.

A month ago soldiers entered Kharbata. They went from house to house, made people stay in one room and stole money. That's what they do. Thieves. For money.

More people are warming up by the fire that is no longer concealed. Others have added some wood.

If you weren't here, they'd put it out. Fire is forbidden here, someone says.

I come here every day at 4 a.m., someone tells us. Every single day, he adds bitterly. They check everything. They check this, pointing at his heart. His body. I am old. What are we carrying, bombs? We are decent people. Never been in jail. We are alright. Every soldier plays with us. They talk about us. Take their time looking at our permits. Then they say 'get back', then 'come here', and on and on and on. Why do they make us open our pants? Why be like this? Once I was sick of them. Take your coat off. Why the coat? What's wrong with my coat? Tell me. We want peace. It's the truth. Not the big ones. We, the little people. Want there to be no difference between Arabs and Jews. We're straight. Honest. Everyone knows me in the village. Y. From Beit Liqya. What do we want? We don't want anything. Just to live our lives in peace.
He looks about sixty years old. Is probably less. Talks very painfully.
We're human, like any humans. No difference between Arabs and Jews. They look into my box twenty times over. What is there to look at in a box? There's food inside. That's what it is. Food.

The sense of humiliation flashing through his words is fascinating and difficult to witness. Perhaps I am wrong but I think that at other checkpoints I've seen anger, and helplessness and bitterness, but not as much humiliation and offense as here. Or perhaps it had been absorbed, in my perception at least, by other things.
Is it possible that these people, who are relatively privileged with their permits to work in Israel, even the fact that they have work – even these people who Israel, in its way, sees as entitled, "proper" enough… The mere obtaining of such a permit, unlike the general sweeping prevention aimed at most Palestinians, does it not (possibly) contain the slightest sense of hope to be regarded as humans? That their different, rare privileges somehow make them real and human in the eyes of the occupiers, for how would they have received them otherwise? And from this sliver of hope, or this assumption, or belief that this is at all possible, the explicit lack of humanity in the treatment they receive everywhere, not totally human after all, this tireless harassment by the soldiers who are entitled to it and seemingly bask in it – this tears them to pieces.
Perhaps feeling so very openly humiliated and offended is a result of expectation. Of trust. Of hope. Of letting down defenses. And it's both fascinating and unbearable.

There are times when some soldier – one of them says – tells you: Get back! Back! and you're already one meter from the bridge. Back, back! he tells us. An elderly man. Almost old. Or so he seems. When he speaks, his mouth trembles. They treat us like dogs. Really. For them we're not human.

The beautiful flames rise and curl. Pleasant orange-yellow-red hues move in the dark. Nearby, the bluish fluorescent lights of the checkpoint in the middle of the road. And the figures of the soldiers wearing their army winter overalls, looking like some computer-game robots.
Some of the people standing in line leave it, warm themselves a bit by the fire and go back. Amazingly, no one is pushing, not only because they fear the soldiers, but because everyone's place is clearly recognized and reserved, so it seems. And that in itself is moving. If you weren't here, they would put the fire out. With their boots. They would overturn it. Like this, someone demonstrates. We must not have a fire here. Must not get warm.
Where are we? Out in the field. Not near them. Why is it forbidden? Two weeks ago they were hitting out with their rifle butts. Ask them. What are we, children? Don't talk! Don't move! Don't smoke! Don't talk on the phone! Do so and so and so. What is this?
As soon as someone is seen talking on his cell phone, they take away his permit and that's it. They tear it up. Or they say: Go home! Because of the cell phone. Even for smoking a cigarette. Sit off to the side. What do you mean? Says the woman commander of the checkpoint. This is my checkpoint. I myself was sent away from the checkpoint because of a cigarette. Because I lit a cigarette.
And if we sit on the concrete here. It's a low concrete ledge alongside some steps ascending towards the checking shed. Then they say go home. Why? Why can't he sit on the concrete? What has he done wrong? An hour and a half standing in line, that's what.

The work permits are valid for three months at a time, they told us. And every time we have to renew them. But this depends on our boss requesting someone or other for work. Some of the employers are good, they say. Some are, some aren't. If the boss does not want to pay compensation or something, he does not ask for a certain worker again, and there's no more permit. And no wages. And no entry to Israel.

We start work at seven, usually. Get here at 4 in the morning, at the latest. Sometimes only get to enter around seven. Because of the soldiers. The boss waits. If he looks and sees no workers, he goes back. He doesn't wait. Then people go back home without any work. And if this goes on, we won't get permits.

It stresses people out, this checkpoint.

There seems to be this fine-line dissonance drawn between the need and norm and instruction to harass the people waiting in line in every way imaginable, in addition to the harassment that is inherent in the mere existence of the checkpoint, for this is its purpose – and the need to let most of them through because their employers are after all Jews, the occupier's people, perhaps his parents.
We could say that in fact the people here, those few who hold permits to work, are 'fortunate', for their work is in the interest of the over-privileged. (God knows what some had to do to obtain it, but that is another matter). Still, however, harassing them as much as possible without totally breaking this cheap labor market exploited for the benefit of "whites" is present in everything. In prohibiting. Denying people warmth and talk and sitting. In the policeman giving out fines for crossing a road that cannot be crossed anywhere else. What is a civil servant who is supposed to serve a large population doing in the middle of nowhere, and against the poorest of the poor?
Are there no other crimes to be fought?

He is doing it for the fatherland.

The line grows longer.
If you weren't here, says someone younger, it would stretch all the way out to the road. And again we are stunned that this is considered better. The line, slow and somber, stretches out into the dark.

Look, there are two sides, someone says excitedly. He looks amazed. Look! They have never opened the other side for checking. Ever. They know you're here. That's why.

Apparently they not only added the woman soldier to the checks today, after noticing that we were filming in spite of their threats – which in itself was rare but not impossible, as they told us. But they had also opened another waiting line in front of the checking post shed. And that is something that - although the physical lane exists – has never happened before. Again and again people tell us, in total awe, that never, but never since they've been coming here, had they ever seen another line opened in front of the checking shed.

This is shocking and symptomatic and says it all, how in fact the presence of a gaze at the soldiers – male and female – and especially the gaze of those regarded by them as their own affinity group, changes their conduct. How honed their senses, how deep their racism…

Today is really special, people said, breaking our heart.

More and more people tell us or ask us to believe how much worse it always is than today. On the one hand they are glad that today's line grew shorter. But they must also say that this is just never so. That we should know how much more awful it really is.

We, who are shaken by what we see already, have no words.

Look, they have their shed. We stand like this in the rain. We don't get a shed. What can I tell you, life sucks. A relatively well-groomed man, just a trimmed chin-beard, complains but smilingly. It is still utterly dark outside.

We suffer a lot at the checkpoint, someone says. Every person who comes here has a permit. But still they look at it as if they were reading a newspaper. On purpose.

Today no one was told to go back. Because you're here.

Someone who came not long ago says, I wouldn't believe it when they said today everything is going smoothly. He smokes and smiles. You're here, they do nothing. Come every day.

We saw no women, so we asked. Very few women come to this checkpoint, someone says. About five or seven of them, as far as he knows. From Beit Liqya and Kharbata. To work in the vegetable fields.

I choose to write about the cheer at the fact that we were there, not because I think there is anything positive about our being there making any difference. Nor do I think that it did make a difference. Not really. Even though of course if it took only one hour for someone to cross instead of several hours, this is definitely something.

And I have no answer to the question whether it is good or bad that we 'improved' anything. Certainly not in essence, perhaps on the contrary. And I have no interest in making evil look 'better' than it really is, or help occupation conceal itself.
It is more than likely that the soldiers' 'moderation' as a response to our presence will be tempered once they realize they will not be evaluated in spite of our witnessing them. That our voice is transparent and ineffective.
But perhaps because of our testimony – if we persevere - sheds will be put up to shelter from the rain, and water faucets, and perhaps the Palestinians will be allowed to light a fire, and talk on their cell phones at least when 'whites' of some sort are present.

But it is important to say, especially now, that such things do not change the essence of it all, only the outer shell. Not the principle of the thing. And that there is quite a chance that we will be used precisely for this purpose, and not for the first time.
"Improving" the way occupation looks and helping to hide it. For it is worth their trouble. To clear their conscience and minimize public censure, and carry on.
It is likely, perhaps, that these very words about our presence making people wait less in line, is already serving evil, and will be used to say quite the opposite of what they were meant to say. That is why I emphasize, from the start, and as a warning, how this relief at our mere presence, is another facet and aspect of that same horror. A symptom of the very same illness. Not to be too celebrated, and very very cautiously so.
And that we must see again how, because of all the wrong and inherent and totally internalized reasons in the world that soldiers have (representing a method and train of thought) – in other words their racism, and the norms, and the power that is everywhere – a few women about whom no one knows a thing except for the fact that they are of the "right race" – can affect so much. Even if not the essence itself.
And I must reiterate how troubling this point is. And how sad.
It is also important to add that at this point we were not even recognized as belonging to one organization or the other. We were absolute strangers. But suffice it for our race to have been obvious, 'their' race, for them to have halted the usual and permitted mandate to harass. Not the inherent one, of course. But its local variation. And its extent.
And one more thing, always, and here too. Even if the soldiers had not added one thing to their instructions – just to stand there and allow or prevent passage according to criteria they had not set themselves; even if they had spoken politely and quietly, it would not change their deeds and the harassment they represent and maintain in their presence there. Nothing of what they would or would not do changes the act of occupation and dispossession and expropriation and theft and terror and prevention of which they are the executors.

There is no gracious occupier, just as there is no enlightened occupation, nor moral rapist.

The fire burns large and beautiful. The waiting line is long. And slow. And sad. People are a bit more relaxed. Smoking. Here and there smiles are seen. More and more stories about incursions of the checkpoint's soldiers in the neighboring villages at night. About children who wet their beds. About how difficult life is. And how before dawn, in the dark, day after day, the occupation soldiers harass them only because they can.

There has never been a day like today, they tell us again, and our heart breaks.

We left after 6 a.m. More men were still arriving. We looked back for a moment. The sign says "Checkpoint! Stop for inspection" in three languages. Then another sign: Kharbata (455), with an arrow pointing to the right. But Kharbata is blocked. As part of the apparatus for hiding evil, there is a road sign pointing to a locality, like a sign of life, but none of its prisoners are allowed to follow the arrow, or even see it usually.

There are more cars on the road now.
A line of light in the dark.
6:15 a.m. We leave. We'll come again, we said. We think of this strange and sweeping generosity we have witnessed in these people, trodden by other people whose identity and language are our own, and still they see us as individuals, not symbols, not a reduction of our affinity group as it were, which has been trampling them both as a method and purpose for at least sixty years now.


Present: Tamar Goldschmidt, Vivi Sury, Roni Hammermann, and Aya Kaniuk (reporting).
Sunday 6.1.2008 4:00 a.m.   Translated by Tal Haran.