Driving and arriving at the checkpoint at Eyal

I was driving a father and his daughter who live in one of the villages close to Qalqiliya from the Rambam hospital in Haifa to the checkpoint at Eyal. A sick old woman also joined us. The 18 year old girl is very ill. She has to go through a difficult operation with severe implications. However, it might save her life. The father becomes emotional when he tells about how the girl was crying when she heard about what she has to go through. The doctor and the nurse were crying with her. Now they are going home to celebrate “Eid ul Adha”.  Next week they will return to the hospital.

The road from Haifa to the Eyal checkpoint is quite long and the father speaks fluent Hebrew. He has been working in Israel since the age of 12 and has made many Israeli friends. Now he’s 52, the father of thirteen children. He has a merchant’s entrance permit to Israel.

His eldest son is married and has one child. He has completed his psychology studies but works as a construction builder in Israel. When I ask if he wouldn’t be able to work as a psychologist on the West Bank, the father answers that yes, he would, but the salary paid by the Palestinian authorities would only be 1800 NIS, while as a construction builder in Israel he earns 400 NIS a day. It’s a decent salary, enough to support his young family and even to save some money.

His second son has finished his law studies this year. He is also planning to work at construction in Israel. His sons want to throw away their diplomas, but the father thinks that they should frame them and keep them. Maybe they will be of use in the future.

14:30 We reach the checkpoint. Laborers are already returning from work at this hour. A van with women arrives. They work in agriculture and get out of the car carrying bags with the fruits of their labor, a yield that might add some flavor to the holiday meal.