The occupation of time

A couple of days ago, I boarded a bus in Ramallah to find three smiling children sitting with their father behind me, all squished into two seats, giggling about something I couldn’t understand.

Minutes later, our bus stopped outside of the checkpoint separating Ramallah from Jeruslaem. The thought that these smiling children were about to enter this frightening structure just didn’t seem right.

The Palestinians in the bus slowly filed out in order to walk one hundred meters past barbed wire and strewn garbage into the checkpoint compound. The artificially magnified voices of Israeli soldiers yelling orders from a guard tower above created a surreal environment.

“Internationals” like myself are given the option to stay on the bus and avoid the ugliness of the checkpoint, as it appears that only Palestinians should be humiliated when traveling throughout their own land.

When I arrived in the checkpoint and waited for the electric turnstile to let another three people through in front of me, I didn’t talk. I didn’t smile. I didn’t frown. I knew I was being watched by the security camera on top and the soldier in the booth to the left.

Why would I want to be in Ramallah?

I had been told that its best to pretend to know nothing of Palestine or Palestinians as such ideas are considered subversive. If the soldiers rifled through my bag and found the booklets I just received from Palestinian University students describing the “Right to Education” campaign, what would I say?

How frightening would this feeling be if I did not have my international privilege? If I was Palestinian?

I found myself unable to concentrate. I kept looking at these three children and wondering what they were thinking as they joined the frustrated mass behind these turnstiles? Or when they passed through the turnstile, only to have it abruptly stop before their father could do the same?

A couple of months ago a friend of mine told me that the occupation steals time from Palestinian society. As I experience the apartheid system of transportation here, albeit with the privilege of an ‘international’, I’m beginning to understand what she was referring to…

A professor at Bethlehem University told me that it used to take approximately half an hour to travel to Ramallah. The last time she went, it took her two and a half hours including over an hour waiting at a checkpoint in the hot sun. Standing on a stone university terrace she pointed out the relatively new Jewish-only settlements of Har Homa (see left) and Gilo, which surround the campus. Two parallel fences have been created infront of Har Homa with a road in between for army patrols. She tells me quite matter-of-factly that if a Palestinian were to step on that road, they would be shot. As I was leaving, I asked her what she was seeking, and she answered quite simply “Justice. Nothing More. Nothing less.”

To link these and other Jewish-only settlements and to ensure that the settlers are able to completely avoid the millions of Palestinians living in their midst, an elaborate apartheid road system has been created. This road system, which Palestinians are prohibited from driving on, cuts through and divides the West Bank. To ensure some degree of movement throughout their land, ‘Palestinian roads' have been built, which are poorly maintained, circuitous, and checkered with checkpoints manned by the Occupation Forces.

Seeing the flash of the green light, I was able to move through the turnstile, past the metal detector, and outside to re-enter my bus forty-five minutes after I originally left it. I ended up sitting beside this same family, and we spent the rest of the ride trying to communicate without any common language, exchanged contact information that will likely never be utilized, and had passerbys take pictures of us with our cameras.

Throughout our disjointed conversation I couldn’t help but wonder about these three children, born and raised under occupation, and oppressed in their own land for the simple fault of not being Jewish. I wondered how this loss of time and movement affects them? Instead of freely playing and exploring the world they are forced to wait, every day, while the occupation seeks to strip their humanity from them. When such discrimination becomes the banal day-to-day routine, what happens to such children?

“Justice. Nothing More. Nothing less.”

This seems like something worth working towards before more time is stolen from these childrens lives.