Qalandiya
At 09:10, when we arrived, the queue reached almost the end of the shed. It was a cold and rainy day. Two volunteers from the EAPPI organization who were on the spot came up to us and told us that the progress is very slow, and that this was the situation during the entire week. According to them, the gate is opened every ten minutes approximately, and each time only about 35 persons are allowed to pass. The volunteer lady contacted the DCO and asked that the process be sped up, but the soldier claimed that he couldn’t do anything in the matter.
The place looked a bit cleaner than usual. One of the toilet rooms was open, and it seemed it had been cleaned with Lysol. At nine fifteen the gate was again opened and people began crowding in and running in the direction of the interior passages. The queue outside shrunk to half its former size.
At 09:20 there was again an accumulation of about seventy people in the queue by the entrance, and a jam formed in the internal passages. Until 09:30 the queue became even longer. We again contacted the DCO and the soldier said he would ask his officer what could be done, and that at that very moment there was no vehicle in which one could send an officer to the CP. The soldier opened the humanitarian gate for three young men who presented a passage permit. They waited for the soldier over half an hour until he came out of the cubicle.
Until 09:45 the queue became longer and longer, the internal passages were crowded and it seemed that there was no movement. At 09:50 the gate was opened again. A small number of people remained at two of the entrances and a longer queue at the third entrance. Ten minutes later the queue again became longer and reached the end of the shed.
We noted a man who walked with the help of crutches and who arrived with his wife and five of his children, aged 2 to 12. The man told us that his leg was broken and that he had to reach hospital for treatment. We tried to draw the attention of the soldier, and after many efforts he came out of the cubicle and said he had no authority to open the humanitarian gate and that the man had to pass by the regular gate. He added that he was authorized to open the gate only for persons in wheelchairs. The volunteer lady told us that last week they didn’t let a man with one leg pass, using the same argument. During all this time the man with the crutches waited, standing up. Then he became integrated in the regular queue. Until we left the checkpoint, no DCO representative arrived to open the humanitarian gate.
At 10:15 the outside queue was cut by half. The soldier in the booth came out. He didn’t come out in order to check whether he could help somebody or speed the process up. He asked for fire from one of the persons waiting in the queue and immediately went back to the booth.
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 FleishmanMay-13-2025Qalandiya: Back-to-back procedure for transferring patients
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