Qalandiya
It began with an uproar at the vehicle checkpoint, knots of people and shouting whose echoes were audible from afar but it was impossible to know what was happening.
When calm had returned Rushko, the police officer, appeared leading a Palestinian youth to jail.
Who is he, why was he arrested – we don’t know.
Then patients from Gaza who had been released from hospital this morning emerged from the DCL office, accompanied by an armed representative of the Civil Administration. There were fifteen of them. Women, men, elderly and children. They were counted, it was ascertained none were missing, their documents were taken, their many belongings were loaded into the baggage compartment, they were ordered to get on the vehicle and be seated, were counted again and checked to ensure no one was missing or had fled, because the authorities’ greatest fear with respect to Gaza residents is that someone might escape, as has happened. Not very often, but still… They’re liable to….what? Actually, it’s not clear what.
Only when it was certain that the bureaucracy had overcome all obstacles did the vehicle transporting them begin its journey.
The boy in the photo wanted his picture taken. His mother also wanted him to be photographed.
She asked him to remove his hat. He refused. He didn’t want anyone to see the treatments had left him bald.
After the Gazans had left an ambulance arrived from Jerusalem with a cancer patient who’d been treated at Hadassah and had been sent home to Ramallah. The ambulance and the patient waited a long time for the arrival of an ambulance from Palestine.
As time passed we began hearing rumors, and Border Police soldiers started arriving.
They said something had happened in the Old City, there are problems at Nablus Gate, they’re searching for someone who’d fled from there and that’s why all the entrances to Palestine have been closed, and because all the roads are blocked the ambulance is also delayed.
Somehow the ambulance managed to get through the traffic jams, arrived and picked up the patient. But the many people who’d gathered at the close of their work day, wanting to return to their homes on the West Bank, confronted locked revolving gates and a line of police officers and Border Police soldiers and security guards armed with rifles and grenades who blocked the road.
We stood, hundreds of people facing them, a crowded, tightly-packed mass, waiting for the storm to blow over and the road to Palestine reopen. A few more minutes, replied the guard I asked how long it would take, but the “few more minutes” lasted almost an hour.
Finally, when darkness had already fallen, two more pairs of ambulances arrived, a woman with cancer and a man also with cancer who were moved from one stretcher to another and from West Bank ambulances to those from Jerusalem.
Qalandiya Checkpoint / Atarot Pass (Jerusalem)
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Click here to watch a video from Qalandiya checkpoint up to mid 2019 Three kilometers south of Ramallah, in the heart of Palestinian population. Integrates into "Jerusalem Envelope" as part of Wall that separates between northern suburbs that were annexed to Jerusalem in 1967: Kafr Aqab, Semiramis and Qalandiya, and the villages of Ar-Ram and Bir Nabala, also north of Jerusalem, and the city itself. Some residents of Kafr Aqab, Semiramis and Qalandiya have Jerusalem ID cards. A terminal operated by Israel Police has functioned since early 2006. As of August 2006, northbound pedestrians are not checked. Southbound Palestinians must carry Jerusalem IDs; holders of Palestinian Authority IDs cannot pass without special permits. Vehicular traffic from Ramallah to other West Bank areas runs to the north of Qalandiya. In February 2019, the new facility of the checkpoint was inaugurated aiming to make it like a "border crossing". The bars and barbed wire fences were replaced with walls of perforated metal panels. The check is now performed at multiple stations for face recognition and the transfer of an e-card. The rate of passage has improved and its density has generally decreased, but lack of manpower and malfunctions cause periods of stress. The development and paving of the roads has not yet been completed, the traffic of cars and pedestrians is dangerous, and t the entire vicinity of the checkpoint is filthy. In 2020 a huge pedestrian bridge was built over the vehicle crossing with severe mobility restrictions (steep stairs, long and winding route). The pedestrian access from public transport to the checkpoint from the north (Ramallah direction) is unclear, and there have been cases of people, especially people with disabilities, who accidentally reached the vehicle crossing and were shot by the soldiers at the checkpoint. In the summer of 2021, work began on a new, sunken entrance road from Qalandiya that will lead directly to Road 443 towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. At the same time, the runways of the old Atarot airport were demolished and infrastructure was prepared for a large bus terminal. (updated October 2021)
Tamar FleishmanJul-21-2026Qalandiya. Conversation in the shadow of the wall
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