David Grossman, in his book The Yellow Wind, writes as follows in the chapter named for what the writer Amos Elon has termed "The Word Laundry": A society in crisis forges for itself a new vocabulary.Israel is not the first state to have done this, but for anyone to whom the language is important it is difficult and infuriating to watch its slow corruption. For gradually, a new tongue is emerging, composed of words that have been pressed into special service, traitorous words that have shed their true meaning, words that no longer describe reality, but attempt, instead, to conceal it.
Grossmans book was written seventeen years ago, a long time ago indeed. Since then the crisis in Israel has deepened and broadened, and with it, above all else, there has grown apace an insatiable need for deception. The IDF, so it seems, has in its employ a special corps of experts in linguistics, (and a very talented group they are, too) whose task it is to render in ordinary language that which is indescribable and unthinkable: to pervert reality, to make palatable that which sticks in the gullet, to present us with a totally false conception of the world in which we live.
The State of Israels struggle against the present Intifada has been characterised above all by the manner in which it has punished the Palestinian population, inter alia, by the strict limitations it has imposed on their freedom of movement. And after the four years in which we have observed what goes on at the checkpoints, it is clear to us that, despite what the army would have us believe, the reason for all these restrictions is certainly not security.
The time we have spent at the checkpoints has sharpened our senses. Today, we see more clearly, we hear more acutely. We have become more sensitive to the routine lies that have become part of our daily lives, to the laundering of language that is so integral a part of the checkpoint reality, that attempts to hide the injustice, the arbitrary treatment, the negation of human rights. This is what we wish to expose to the full light of day, to comment on and explain.
Outsiders are at a loss in every culture strange to them as they listen to the insiders, the native-born, who talk in what sounds like a code that is perfectly intelligible to them. What follows here is a selection from the checkpoint slang.
This is the term that the soldiers habitually use to describe the Palestinians. When one takes a mass of people, all in a hurry, all edgy and nervous, and has them walk towards the checking stations between concrete barriers or some other form of fencing, when they must then go through narrow, cramped turnstiles known, so cutely, in Hebrew as carousels q.v. which all too often become stalled with frightened people inside, and one then behaves very crudely towards them, detains them for hours on end in the heat or the cold and the rain, what, after all that, does one say of them? One dismisses them with scorn: “They're just like animals!” Just for the sake of comparison, take a look at the behaviour of the average Israeli driver when he finds that his parking spot has been usurped…
Unlike the word `Palestinians', which is used in `normal' army language when security is under discussion, the term `Arabs' occurs in what one might speak of as the `anthropological' context also noted here, for example, in reference to the use of `They' (q.v.). Thus we find the following: “The Arabs have a different conception of time…” “Arabs don't feel the heat.” “It's well known that it's not proper for Arab men to carry babies in their arms, so no Arab father will ever be seen holding his baby in his arms”. See also under `Animals'.
Under international law and, in particular, under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention dealing with the protection of the civilian population in time of war or under conquest, it is the occupying power that is responsible for the safety, security and general fabric of life of the civilian population within the occupied area. And all this in order to enable the civilian population to carry on as far as possible with its normal life, even when the occupying power is waging a struggle against terrorism. While Israel is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, it does not accept that the Convention's provisions are to be applied in the occupied territories for the simple reason that it does not define the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as `occupied territories'. But in order not to look too bad in the eyes of the world, it has set up a body called the Humanitarian Hotline which is in fact nothing more than a fig-leaf to cover up the absence of any humanitarian approach in its government of the territories. In practice, neither the Palestinians nor the soldiers are aware of the hotline's existence. Yet, for all that, it has to be said that in certain instances the hotline has been of help. But where this has been the case, what has happened is that everyday needs have had to be treated as `special cases' which were then dealt with under the guise of `humanitarian' action, as matters of mercy rather than of law.
As the soldiers see it, a baby must provide a Palestinian with a wonderful cover-up for a Kalashnikov: “What have you got there, a baby or a Kalashnikov?” as one soldier is recorded as having said to an obviously pregnant woman.
The system by which goods are transferred from trucks approaching from one side of the checkpoint to trucks taking them onward from the other side. This system, too, is in use for the transfer of the sick from one ambulance to another. At almost all the checkpoints, those using them must walk a considerable distance from the vehicle in which they arrive at the checkpoint to another vehicle which carries them on the next leg of their journeys. This is particularly difficult for the sick, the elderly and people accompanied by several children. The term `back-to-back' gives no indication whatsoever of the extent of the suffering and injustice involved.
Services It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of (mainly) young men whose names appear on GSS lists and who thus cannot be granted a magnetic card – the absolutely essential, though not necessarily sufficient, condition for receiving a permit to move around the territories, and in and out of Israel or the `seam area' (q.v.). On the face of it, this GSS list – from which death alone is usually the only release – is meant to filter out those regarded as dangerous. But in fact, any Palestinian with the means to appeal to Israel's High Court will generally find that even before his appeal is heard his name will be removed from the list, which surely indicates that there was no reason whatsoever for it to have been there from the outset.
A camera at a checkpoint is like a red rag to a bull. For over the soldiers there always looms the long shadow of the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Since the camera can record violations of human rights, hence any photographic record is potentially threatening. Soldiers will usually try to justify their objections to photography by saying that the checkpoint is a `closed military area' and thus `secret' and that photography is therefore forbidden there. This is a patently absurd claim since thousands of Palestinians go through this `secret' place daily, sometimes – to their regret – even twice daily, and see everything that goes on there.
The Hebrew term for the turnstiles harks back to the children's playground… Palestinians negotiating the checkpoints must walk 'wahad, wahad' (one at a time) through the turnstile on their way to the other side. The turnstile's revolutions are remotely controlled by a soldier standing some ten metres away. In some checkpoints there are two turnstiles to be negotiated one after the other. Use of the turnstiles facilitates the limiting of contact between the soldiers and the `potentially hostile' population. The width of each wing of the turnstile is less than 60 centimetres (the turnstiles were specially made for the Palestinian population). This should be compared with the 80 centimetres and more that is the width of similar turnstiles in the State of Israel. Completely omitted from consideration here is the fact that people going through the checkpoints are often encumbered by suitcases and large packages, and some of them are stout, or are mothers carrying small children in their arms. The turnstiles frequently get stuck with people caught inside them. In such cases, the burning desire to get out of the checkpoint as fast as possible creates enormous pressure and crowding, tempers flare and patience quickly gets exhausted so that men and women, the elderly, babes in arms, children and the crippled are all crushed up against the metal bars and the turnstile becomes a cruel trap (q.v. 'animals').
Closure An all-encompassing prohibition on any movement from the territories into Israel. Closures are brought into operation at any time when there is any suspicion of some security danger of any sort: warning of terror activities, Jewish festivals and holidays, Moslem festivals and other special occasions as for example the death of Yasser Arafat. If one takes note of what the media have to say, then the closure ends far earlier than it does in reality at the checkpoints. “What do I care if that's where you live ? You're not going through, don't you understand. There's a closure on today. I don't know and I don't care until what time” – these were the words of a soldier talking to a Palestinian labourer who wanted to get to his home in the `seam area' after a day's work in the West Bank.
This is the term applied to young men – the age-range affected is varied from time to time – held at the checkpoints while the danger they pose is checked out. Even if the young men have magnetic cards or permits, the checkpoint soldier will take their ID cards from them and relay their numbers to the GSS, and meanwhile send the young people to the detention area. The check lasts anywhere from half an hour to three hours or more, and this in addition to the time the detainees will have spent standing on line before they reached the soldier at the checking station. Detention also serves as an `educational punishment' to be imposed at the whim of the soldier on duty. It should be stressed that, in the vast majority of cases, the detainees are set free to go on their way, without any action being taken against them, at the end of the GSS check.Who is detained? The `leakers' (q.v.) caught in the hills as they attempt to evade the checkpoint any young man who has dared to talk back to a soldier, or look at him in a way that seems like `cheek', taxi drivers who have crossed the `virtual' line beyond which they may not park (see under `sterile'), foreign nationals who want to visit relatives in the territories, `liars' whose accounts of themselves do not ring true in the ears of the soldiers: in short anyone at all can easily find himself in the detention area. Here he will waste half a day or so, whiling away his time on the broken benches, or squatting on the filthy, wet concrete floor. Close by are the stinking latrines, open and with no sewage pipes. If the detainees complain or plead, they are met with orders: “No sitting down!” “No smoking!” or other variants of `security' orders. Women too, it should be noted, are subject to detention, but are only seldom detained.