With the taxi-van drivers, residents of Beit Sira village, near the concrete slabs that block all entry to the villages and prevent their residents from traveling Road 443 that has been paved on their land.

We got out of Tamar's car. Concrete slabs block the road. Behind them stand taxi-vans. Men are seen leaning, some smoking, idle or so it seems at first. An army jeep stands nearby, closed and threatening, soldiers inside. Stark Occupation embodied right in front of us. Blocked villages. Unemployment. Armed soldiers and power and over-privilege. And other Israelis speed along the apartheid road in full view of injustice, not wanting to know about it, not caring.

There was one near the checkpoint, the soldiers called him and he escaped in this direction. Several voices overlap, telling us. "Then the soldiers came, asked who this is. The coffee vender here told them I don't know, don't know him, he's from another village. Now you see what they did to him?" Pointing to the ground. "They spilt his coffee. And hit him. Poor guy. No food. He doesn't make even ten or twenty shekel a day. He can't work inside Israel. Blacklisted. Why did they do this to him? He has a fractured arm and metal plates in his leg… Disabled. They spilt all his stuff on the ground so he won't earn a thing… The guy they're chasing is probably a worker. That's why he ran away from them. Maybe he put his bag here. All the workers come here because the coffee vender sits here all the time. So the soldier says, whose bag is this? You must know who it is. He said I don't know. Then they said you must not smoke. No talking. Shut up. And finally they beat the people here. And spilt everything. And took the guy. His leg with the plates and his arm in a cast. They wanted to handcuff him but his arm is broken. He told them that. And the soldier says he doesn't care."
They took him over there, now he's next to the checkpoint.

Things are still strewn all over the ground. Everything happened just now. "Want a cigarette?" No thanks, I said. The force of reality on the one hand, and the disturbing laconic way in which it is told. Not laconic. Matter of fact. Strange.

It's those soldiers there that did it? We pointed to the jeep nearby. Yes, those soldiers.

Minutes after we arrived with our camera, we film them. One of them gets out, an officer, and says we must not film. We said we may and went on filming him. He got back in the jeep and they drove away.

Did you see how they ran because they're being watched?

Some of the faces are flushed, perhaps they were running away from the soldiers and just got back, maybe it had just happened, maybe they are concerned about the coffee vender… "I was just reversing the cab," says A., "when they came. The soldier approached me, opened the door. Went like this with his leg on the car. And the car was moving. He caught me. I said, wait until the car stops. Come here with me, he yelled, and signaled handcuffs. I said, no way you're going to do this. There were four soldiers. They all came to me. Stand. Shut up. I refused. This was about five minutes before you got here.
When they saw the camera they ran. Because now someone is after them."

They went over to the trees, someone else says, and we all look at where he is pointing. They went to the village now. Look over there. And we could – barely – see a jeep far by the trees on the hillside. And a trail. Then there were sounds. It took a moment to realize what they were.
Bullets. Don't you hear?
We heard.
They're at the entrance to Beit Sira. Not inside yet, someone else says. Maybe they're shooting in the air.

Some long, terrible moments of shooting, and then the shooting stopped.

This place where we stood and talked is the blocked access road to Beit Sira and Kharbata and Beit Liqya and other villages from road 443, the road that used to serve traffic to Ramallah and everywhere else for the villages of this entire area. For several years now they have been forbidden to use it. This means that instead of getting to Ramallah – the regional urban center – in ten or twenty minutes at the most, they must drive for an hour and a half through six villages, on potholed roads over bumps and ditches.
It means that there must no longer be labor pains or dying or heart attacks for roads are blocked, and lengthy, and dangerous. The short, smoothly-paved highway is strictly for the over-privileged. Two value systems, two road systems and different civil rights and a different right to life.
Harassment has only increased ever since they appealed to the court with the help of an attorney appointed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, in an attempt to lift the ban on using this road (that was paved on their land, which they had not sold, which was confiscated from them with the absurd and cruel pretext that the highway was being built to answer their needs).
Yes, there were always harassments, but lately it happens all the time. Sometimes everyday, and especially at night, sometimes once a week the soldiers invade villages, shooting, sometimes in the air, sometimes teargas, sometimes just making noise to frighten people.

It's to frighten the children, says A. That's why they enter. A. has seven children, he says. So at night they came, last week, stuck everyone in a corner, in the middle of the night. They were already asleep. The little children are afraid. And they throw teargas. At the children too. It's too hard, he says. Too hard. If you see my kids, you'll cry. They're little. Two-years old. Seven-years old… They can't sleep. Sometimes they come every day. Once they close the village streets, no one is allowed outside.

A young man, maybe 30-years old, perhaps a bit older, suddenly interrupts. His face is fierce and withdrawn. After we heard him, we understood.
I have a sick child, he will be dying soon… They closed the roads at ten. Said no one was allowed in the street. Curfew… And the child is ill. I told the soldier, let me out of the house, to get the doctor. I said, I'll be back in ten minutes. Here's my ID, keep it. He said, no. I beg you, I said, he'll die. The child will die.
Let him die at home, he said.
He said I must not go out, you see. My child is ill. These soldiers are all bastards. A small child should die at home? I got back home. Took a drink of water. Sewed my mouth. What shall we do? They closed the entrance there. Said it was forbidden… He's sick here, his heart. Twelve years old. Needs treatment. They said, don't come out of the village. I took him in the morning. I waited until 4a.m., until they left the village. Then I took him.
You understand? He told me, let him die at home. My child.
And then he was quiet for a moment. Stands like a man with his gun, he continued. Lucky for them they have their guns. If they didn't, I'd take all ten of them and stick them in the mud. Throw them on the garbage pile.
And we were all silent for a moment. Because in the sea of things, of injustice, abstract and tangible, his small son, so ill, took up all the space, and the imagination, and priorities, and we waited until his gaze subsided, and we continued.

It's these soldiers here. From the Checkpoint. From here. All the time. They answer our question.

Sometimes soldiers come at midnight. Yesterday they came into the village at ten in the morning. Caught a ten-year old boy. Began to beat him with a stick. Just yesterday.

At night they cannot sleep. Afraid, says a slightly older man. Everything is forbidden. Don't talk. Turn off the engine. Don't want to hear you… As if we're not human.

Voice after voice, they tell about the incursions, about the children who wet their beds at night, about how in Kharbata soldiers came in at night and shut people in one room while they looked for money and took it, too, house after house, and how hard it is, and how much easier life used to be.

First of all, this road is land taken from our village, says H. In Israel when they come to pave a road through someone's property they do things for them and they pay compensation. We don't want to be paid, just open the road, let us use it by law. I don't want compensation for my land. I want to use the road… to get to Ramallah… It just makes people suffer, all of this. They suffer.

Two people died in my cab at the checkpoint because they wouldn't let us through, said someone who had kept still until then. Severe-looking, anger tightening his eyes. They were ill, in my cab, he continues. And the soldiers said we couldn't get through. Let him die in your car, the soldiers said…
He studies history in the Open University, he told us. He wants to know everything. Because it's all about history. I haven't been in town for five years now. Only here. We want things back as they used to be… The Israeli is permitted to move, and I am not? It is simply South Africa here. Separate places. Going out separately. At the beach separately. Same thing here. It's now my fourth or fifth or sixth year of not going anywhere. This is life?

People are being too pressured. Then they… What can you do. People will go crazy. We want to live. The soldiers keep pressuring people. If you pressure someone too long, what will he do? Blow himself up. Go crazy.

Even if Israel's point of departure were not blatantly false and immoral, namely if the entire policy of oppression and restriction and dispossession and pressure were really a consequence of terrorist attacks, even if we assume that at the absence of terrorism Israel would not have exercised such discriminating and brutal apparatuses – from the individual Palestinian's point of view, there is absolutely no connection between these accusations and himself. He cannot possibly conceive why he is not allowed to use the road by which he could access the spaces of his life, or freely cross the checkpoint. What has all this got to do with him? Nothing, really.

He did not want his picture taken and we didn't. He is in his late twenties. His forehead bears a fresh wound. He too was beaten by those soldiers, earlier. He has just recently lost his work permit for the Mevo Horon colony, so he sits idle at the blocked entrance to Beit Sira village, his village, with his private car, hoping someone will come along and need his services as a taxi, although chances are meager. The few people who arrive use taxi vans and pre-arranged cabs who do not fill their workday with fares anywhere.
I used to work in Mevo Horon. They open the gate for workers at 7 a.m. For an hour. They open it again at 5 to 5:30 p.m. And that's it. Then it's closed. And if someone has to work until 7 in the evening, what can he do? I finished at 7, the gate was closed. Where can I go? So I went to Modi'in in order to get here. The police caught me. Wanted to see my permit. I said here is my permit. They said this is for Mevo Horon. Why are you coming to Modi'in? I said, what can I do? I am not allowed to stay at Mevo Horon. And the gate is closed. I want to go home, that's all. They took me to the police station and interrogated me. Opened a file at the Modi'in police station and now I went to the DCO at Beit El to get a new magnetic card. For the permit. They said, you can't get it. You have a problem with the Modi'in police. That's it. No permit. And they opened a file. Now I have a record. And no more work.
He's a terrorist, F. laughed at A.
Said he paid a lawyer 1,500 shekel to get his name off the police blacklist so that he can get a permit to go back and work at the colony. He has been waiting for two months now. So far, no go.
The second time we saw him, a few days later, he told us the lawyer told him it's alright, his name has been taken off the list. And that means that after several months out of work, he will soon be able to go through the gates again to work at Mevo Horon. Until the gate closes again. Because he finished work after 5:30 p.m. or because the soldiers didn't feel like opening the gate. And then perhaps the police will catch him again, perhaps not right away, but eventually. And he will lose his work permit again.

H. worked at Mevo Horon colony for a while, until his permit was not renewed. His employer owes him 35,000 shekel which he has not paid him back for three years now. Maybe that's why.
How opportune the automatic, sweeping restriction system is for greedy exploiters. They stop requesting workers, and the civil administration (a kind of monstrous entity serving the Occupation and dispossession under the pretense of caring for the civilian
population) stops issuing permits. How easy… The employer does not want to pay, or it's time for compensation, no problem. The worker is no longer required. Automatically he will not be issued a permit. And he will be prevented from entering his former workplace. And if he is caught without a permit, he is then an 'outlaw'. And the robber is safe.

A taxi-van stops, five young fellows get off, walk determinedly towards the checkpoint. Soldiers caught them near Ni'alin checkpoint, an inner checkpoint a few kilometers deeper inside the West Bank. They were beaten up there, their IDs taken away, and they were told to walk back to Beit Sira Checkpoint to get their IDs back. One of them, N., very scarred, his ears protruding, almost a boy. Look, look what they did to me, he says, his face still very much a child's, wearing bright red, very unkempt, restless. Two weeks ago he was beaten with a rifle butt. In his face. There, in Ni'alin. The cut has not yet healed. He is from Shabtin, near Ni'alin. Our life is not pleasant, he says. Not good. We go only to earn money for our little brothers. They beat us all the time. Yelling. Come here. Beat up whoever does not follow. Now they caught us. The soldier says to me, hey, son of a bitch, what are you doing here? I said I came to work. Only to work. He said, give me your ID. I gave it to him and he kicked me. Said, go to the checkpoint. Walk. I said it's far to the checkpoint on foot. He said, walk or I'll beat you up if you don't. I said, I have to go now? He said, if you don't go to the checkpoint now for your ID I'll screw you. I said, okay I'm going. We do what they say so they won't mess us up. Only for that. Not to get in trouble.

We hear more and more about Ni'alin checkpoint. Located near a place where the Wall has not been completed. And many workers try their luck passing through to find work. It has turned into a space open for the soldiers' personal and institutional cruelty. Who ambush them there and beat them up. Detaining them for hours. Sometimes just scaring them and forcing them to stand with their backs in one or the other direction for a long time. Or do not return their IDs. So we sneak in there, says N., whoever wants to work… What can we do.

Then we all see a blue civilian police car arrive. And stop. A policeman and a policewoman take out a young man, his feet chained, his hands cuffed in back. They release his legs and hands and he keeps rubbing his wrists, to get the blood flowing normally again, it seems. The policeman hands him his ID. He hands the policeman something, we do not see what it is. What has he done? people ask. He is a worker. Needs money
to feed his children. His little brothers.

We see a tired worker. And think he has not earned anything today, for he was caught.

The young men turn to the checkpoint again, to get back their IDs.

From afar we see two soldiers at the checkpoint give the IDs to these young workers. Who return. Rapidly crossing between the concrete slabs to get into one of the taxi vans and leave. Probably to Shabtin.

The young men who were caught will probably try to sneak in again, for what can they do? says H. They have to earn. Bring bread for the children, family, brothers.

There will be a food Intifada (uprising) here, someone says. People have to work. We are good people. This is not right.

Some time ago, there was this pregnant woman – the history student tells us. He took her all through the villages. She gave birth in the car, they did not make it. She had a girl, he laughed. Lucky.

I’m sick of life here, says H. I want to go where I please. Just go where I please. Just go and go…

Why do they do all this? So we won't eat? Won't work? Won't bring anything home to our kids?

In the evening, the coffee vender was released. They came, threw everything he had on the ground, beat him up, threatened and detained him, and in the evening they released him. Until next time.

There is something terribly strange about this place. That is so open and visible to anyone. A few meters away from the highway where Israelis speed by. How can they not see? I wondered. Don't they see the concrete slabs? Don't they ask themselves what it means, that the road here is blocked, with a sign naming a Palestinian village, without any possibility of entering or exiting it. Do they not have eyes?

It had been Wednesday again at Qalandiya Checkpoint, a few years ago… A father and his little son stood waiting their turn, then walked up, the father's ID was checked and he was "permitted" to proceed, his little son in front of him, when the soldier – probably unintentionally, I think – just carelessly, accidentally bumped the father in the back.
The father was pushed forward and hit his son who flew down to the ground.
The father, knowing it was a soldier who bumped into him, did not protest, his face did not change, he did not look back. Silently he picked up his little son, who also got up silently, and they went on their way, as if nothing had happened, his little son in front, he in the back.
The soldier who unintentionally pushed the father saw the father being pushed and the child falling to the ground. He is not blind. He turned around to his mates and joked with them about this or that, not out of any special cruelty. He did not seem to have any special intentions, he was not especially content with what had happened, I'm fairly certain he did not mean to make the child fall on his face, and when he joked with his buddies it was probably about their stuff, unconnected with what had just taken place. Occupier and occupied – the occupied knows, sees, and keeps silent. Withdrawn. Walking on. For he has to bear his life, his son, what is left. At that moment crossing the checkpoint was more important than pursuing justice. Demanding it.
The occupier does not see, looks and sees nothing. Nothing had happened as far as he was concerned. A Palestinian father being bumped into and pushing his son on the ground is nothing. A non-event.

Aya Kaniuk and Tamar Goldschmidt. January 2008. Translated by Tal Haran.