Crossing the Checkpoint at 4:00AM

My alarm goes off at 3:15AM. My apartment is cold, dark. Ellie is still sleeping, cozy in her crate. I've only gotten about 5 hours of sleep, but I'm wide awake; nervous. I dress in layers - tights under jeans, sweatshirt under jacket underneath thicker jacket; gloves, hat, scarf. The temperature is in the mid-40s, which isn't so bad, except that I know I'll be standing out in it for several hours.

3:30AM and I'm out the door. It's almost exactly 1 mile from my apartment to the checkpoint by foot; I start walking. My street is quiet - no cars, no people. When I turn onto the main road though, I begin to see faint figures in the distance: it's the first few Palestinians who have crossed into Jerusalem for work.

As I continue, these few individuals become a steady stream of men walking towards me. I'm going against the flow. I play a quick round of "how much do I stick out right now?" - a game I find myself playing multiple times a day here.

The evidence piles up against me:

-I'm the only female on this entire street
-I'm a young female, walking, alone, at 4 in the morning
-I'm walking to the checkpoint, rather than away from it
-My winter hat is an obnoxious shade of neon pink

Like, really obnoxious.

This morning, I have failed this game.

I've written before about some of my experiences crossing through Checkpoint 300, the main access point for Palestinians with West Bank ID's to get from Bethlehem to Jerusalem and back again. When I first arrived here, the steel bars and prison-like appearance of it intimidated me, but now I walk through without even a second glance at the 25ft high concrete wall that separates these two cities. It's become part of the backdrop here, part of everyday life.

However, I recently had the opportunity to experience this checkpoint at its peak time of the day: between the hours of 4:00AM-7:00AM on a weekday morning. I joined with a few EAPPI volunteers (Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel) who monitor the checkpoint three times a week during these hours. They come from all over the world, and help by simply being an international presence, observing what goes on there, and reporting any violence or wrongdoing from soldiers that they see. They also count the number of Palestinians who get through and how long the process takes them.

To give you some idea of the chaos, roughly 4500 Palestinians cross through Checkpoint 300 into Jerusalem every morning during this 3 hour time frame. The majority of these individuals (98%) are men with work permits which allow them into Israel proper. These permits are not the property of each specific individual, however, but are instead controlled by the company that employs them. Therefore, if an employee is late for their shift, their permit is cancelled, and suddenly they are no longer allowed entrance to the country. This means that it is imperative for Palestinians to cross through the checkpoint with enough time to get to their place of employment. Which means people start lining up at 4:00AM, and it is a constant stream (more like a rushing river) until 7:30/8:00AM.

I make it to the checkpoint and go through. I pause in the middle (there are basically two sections of the checkpoint, separated by a small parking lot/open area in between). The turnstiles for the first segment are stalled - I can see the people waiting inside to pass through. Then, suddenly, they unlock, and there is a rush of men all at once. I'm startled to see them push through the turnstile and then run across the parking lot to get to the next one. These are men of all ages - old, young; running.

I go through the turnstile in the opposite direction; meet up with the people from EAPPI. I am relieved to no longer be there alone. We stand in what has been affectionately termed, "the cage." It's basically a small square area surrounded by bars, which leads to the first turnstile one has to pass through when trying to enter Jerusalem. There is a guard booth and two soldiers stationed at this station who are able to lock the turnstile at any given moment. Sometimes they do this for traffic flow reasons, waiting until the second area (across the parking lot, where ID's are inspected) clears up; sometimes their reasoning is less clear.

There are so many people here. The "cage" is split into two sides, one for entering Jerusalem and one for exiting. We stand on the exit side, opposite the crowd.

The cage, crowded with men. Some would come up the exit ramp and then squeeze underneath the gate separating the two sides in order to get through to the turnstile faster. Just this week a man was knocked unconscious when attempting to crawl through - the turnstile turned on and there was a rush of people; he got trampled underneath.

Men cram into the turnstile, sometimes fitting two or three people into the slot meant for one. I took a couple of brief videos to try and capture the process. The first was taken while the turnstile was locked - and so the number of people piling into the cage just kept growing with nowhere to go. The second is when the turnstile was suddenly turned on again, and people began rushing to go through it.

When the turnstile was locked:

When the turnstile opened back up:

After observing this process for a while, a couple of the EA's and I decide to try walking through to enter Jerusalem. For me this is a necessity - I have to leave from my apartment for church at 9:00AM, and still need to be home in time to walk Ellie and shower before hand (Sunday is the start of the work week in Israel). And, now that I'm in Bethlehem, the only way to get home is back out the way I came in.

There is a concrete ramp that leads up to the "cage." This ramp is also jammed with people.

Younger men climb up the sides and walk along the upper bars in order to get ahead in line.

 

Men standing along the bars above while others crowd the ramp below.

Men holding onto the bars as they move sideways, bar by bar, to get to the first turnstile in the checkpoint.

I'm shocked by the sheer number of people; by the density of the line waiting inside the ramp area. We continue down the exit side of the checkpoint in order to get in the "que before the que" - see, the line of people starts way before the infrastructure of the ramp itself. Outside the que of bodies resembles a large funnel, with each individual being one tiny droplet, trying to squeeze it's way through.

People enter from all sides, trying to get to the beginning of the entry ramp.

I and the other EA's add to the disorganized mass straining towards the gateway. One of them tells me that this is the worst part, trying to get through the narrow opening. This isn't a passive line that you can just stand in and wait for it to move forward - instead you have to actively struggle to make any progress. I'm in front, with an EA behind me. It's my job to serve as the battering ram for our small group. Images of Black Friday shopping lines and Mardi Gras crowds come to mind, yet neither of those can compare to the packed-in tightness I feel all around me.

The crowd moves with the opening and closing of the turnstile way ahead, past the cage. We feel the reverberation effects of the people slowly beginning to shift forward, and I fast learn that as soon as this happens you have to fight your way up, one inch at a time. Then, once you can't move any closer to the person ahead of you, you must lock your feet in and brace your knees. If you don't do this, then each hard fought for inch will be immediately lost in the backwards wave that inevitably follows every push forward.

"Wave" really is the best way to describe the pitch back motion that occurs. It's like one step forward, three steps back every time. If you don't plant your feet, it is impossible to go anywhere. I am so packed into the crowd that it's a struggle to get my phone out of my pocket to take a picture - I'm willing to bet that if I stuck my elbows out to the people next to me and lifted my feet off the ground, I'd remain upright; we are that tightly squeezed into the mass.

My view from inside the group of people trying to get onto the ramp.

At one point a guy a few feet in front of me bends down. It is unclear what he is doing, but there is no room for him to bend over - any time one person takes up more than their allotted amount of space it is felt by every other person within a 5-person radius. His bending causes the people behind him to push towards me, and suddenly I'm even more crushed than I was before.

Then, the man pops upright again, his fist raised high into the air - and in his fist...a box of chocolate milk. He cheers, and the men around him cheer too. My eyes meet those of a man a couple people to my right, and we both chuckle and shake our heads. The tension is released like air from a balloon: smiles and laughs are exchanged around the huddle as the man happily drinks his milk ahead of us.

That small moment was like a brief flicker of humanity; a small reminder that we're all still human, even if our present circumstances make us feel more like cattle being herded to the slaughter than people heading to work.

Over the course of 45 minutes, we have traveled about two feet forward. The crowd is too big. We aren't dedicated enough in our pushing to get in. We decide to give up and try again a little bit later.

Surprisingly, it is quite easy to exit - people readily fill in the small gaps we leave, and we're back again where we started. It feels strange to be able to move freely again - to breathe without the distinct sensation of someone sitting on your lungs.

Closer to 7:30AM the crowd has lessened significantly. The line inside the ramp is still full, but there are no more men climbing along the bars above, and the "que before the que" is only 3 people deep now, rather than 30. We decide to try again.

My view from inside the ramp walkway - still packed with people, but at least this time I can breathe.

I make it through the checkpoint in about 45 minutes and am able to re-enter Jerusalem. This is a significant change from the hour and 45 minutes it took one of the EA's to walk through earlier that morning. I begin my walk home to get ready for church, my head spinning from all that I have experienced and seen.

I can't imagine going through this process every morning. What do you go home and tell your family in the evenings? Your wife? Your children? Do you tell them you skipped ahead in line today by climbing on top of the metal bars? Do you recount your successful crawl underneath the gate of the cage without being trampled by your peers?

How do you explain the crushing, rushing, animal-ness of it all?

Or do you just say nothing - work was fine, checkpoint was fine, now I'm home to eat and sleep and wake up to do it all over again.

How does one rinse and repeat this kind of life and still manage to maintain a sense of pride and dignity and human-ness within themselves? Within one another?

View of the sun rising over Bethlehem from inside the checkpoint.