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"The journey to Jerusalem, for tens of thousands of Palestinians, begins in a dank, trash-strewn hangar.
They move through cage-like passages and 7-foot-high turnstiles to be checked by Israeli soldiers from behind bulletproof glass. The soldiers often yell at them through loudspeakers. They are supposed to work in pairs to speed the lines through, but sometimes one of them is asleep, his feet on his desk.
The Qalandia crossing, say the Israelis, is where potential attackers are filtered out before they can reach Jerusalem on the other side. Palestinians say it's a daily humiliation they must endure to reach jobs, family, medical appointments and schools.
This main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem is one of the rawest points of friction between Israel and the Palestinians, a symbol of the day-to-day bitterness that grinds between the two sides as the U.S. struggles to relaunch peace negotiations."
moreWhy all Israel lobbyists should be forced to go thru the Qalandia checkpoint<
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"When I went through the Qalandia checkpoint in Palestine a week or two back, I kept thinking, Anyone who lobbies for Israel in the U.S. should be forced through this checkpoint. All the congressmen should come here too. What upset me was the banality of humiliation: experiencing the draggy line that took 20 minutes, and the cattle car/industrial buzzings and lights and automatic gates; seeing a dapper middle-aged guy forced to go back for who knows what reason; seeing the fingerprint reader; and then watching a matronly woman whose papers weren’t perfect standing in paralysis or fear or helplessness before looking around with a redfaced childish expression of dauntedness. Observing her humiliation angered me. Then I went through and the young Israelis barked, "Open it, open it," at me as I held up my passport."
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