Qalandiya - the road between the checkpoint and the refugee camp is wide open again
The feast of freedom is almost upon us.
The freedom of Abu Abdallah’s three eldest sons has been taken away.
“Abdallah and Ahmad are in Ofer prison, and Mohammad in Hadarim”, Abu Abdallah said. “Who even asks why? They gather people to prison in order to have cards for a deal with Hamas. They gather crowds of people.”
Abu Abdallah is right. He has had experience, living in between the seams of occupation rule. Lately, indeed, young Palestinians are being incarcerated while being accused of terrorism or membership in Hamas without any connection to their real essence and to truth.
Abu Abdallah is neither young nor healthy, and cannot feed his family the way he used to, nut there are people and children to feed and bills to pay. He has no choice but to recruit the youngest Tamimi, Ibrahim, to work in the family fruit stand.
Ibrahim left his studies and from a pampered youngster, became the family’s main breadwinner.
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Inside the warfare fog of the Gaza Strip, people disappear from the public eye. People - the living dead - are treated as bargaining cards, goods to be sold. Thus, the three sons of Abu Abdallah are now kept in prisons, like thousands of others, and many bodies kept somewhere and not buried by their families. Thus, the body of Khader Adnan who was on a hunger strike until May 2, 2023, and thus too the body of Walid Daka, who died two weeks ago, and many others whose names I do not know.
The people coming back to the West Bank from Jerusalem make sure to have their ID identified by the new system installed on both sides of the track. They learned the hard way that whoever forgets this or dismisses the ruler’s remote control is in for trouble.
The way from the Checkpoint to the refugee camp is now wide open again, no need to cover a long, exhausting distance or jump over fences.
