Ar-Ram/Qalandiya, Wednesday 23.2.05 PMObservers: Yvonne M., Daniela Y., Carmel B., Eli L., Aya K. (reporting)We reach Ar-Ram town square at 3 p.m. The entrance to the town is blocked by a concrete slab lying across the main road.The wall is already being built at the middle of the square, the last open space there. The instant when Ar-Ram will be split hermetically, its life cut in half, is getting near.Close to the factory near the Border Patrol center that took over the old supermarket, stand 20 Palestinian men, detained next to two BP jeeps. Apparently they work at the factory. They all have special permits. Some live in Ramallah, and they arrive to work daily. Today the BP soldiers decided to detain them. We looked, noted down the jeep license plate numbers, asked questions, and they were released 5 minutes later.Many van drivers holding Palestinian IDs drive cars that bear a yellow (Israeli) license plate. They tell us their cars have been confiscated. For a month. This is not new. The yellow license-plated cars have been confiscated for quite a while under various pretexts (if any), especially the claim that they mustn’t drive an Israeli vehicle because it is dangerous. They might infiltrate Israel as Israelis. On the other hand, the cars bearing Palestinian license plates are confiscated under the pretext that this is Jerusalem municipal area. Like many other Occupation manifestations, the confiscation precedes its pretext, harassment precedes rationale. First grab, steal, hurt, curb, prevent. The reason will follow. Whether a reason ‘recruited’ from British Mandate regulations, or from the Turks’ time here, or the Crusaders, or because this is a time of national emergency – all’s flexible, the constant given is harassment for its own sake.Why confiscate their cars, incidentally? Very simple. Because they need them for their livelihood. This way they won’t make a living. They’ll suffer. That’s it.For if the cars would constitute some hazard, jeopardize anyone, why would they – after paying money and time – be allowed back on the road?We decided to take a walk along the wall. Nearly all the shops are closed. At one point sewage pipes are broken and the stuff seeps out. Seemingly because of the wall construction works. We called the Civilian Administration Hotline (the one entitled “humanitarian – one of the Occupation’s storefront PR agencies, along with the army spokesperson’s office). We reported the sewage situation. Complained. The soldier girl checked and told us it was in area B. Meaning, she says after looking into it, that this is Palestinian territory, under Palestinian responsibility. So let the mayor fix it.In other words: Israel builds a wall on Palestinian territory, a wall that constitutes a prison. While constructing this prison, Israel destroys the sewage system, Palestinian sewage. So they, the Palestinians, must fix the damage, for its their territory.It has been reported several times, and quoted from Division Commander Edelstein, that in Qalandiya everyone may pass without a special permit (tasrich). We asked the DCO representative what he knows about this, and he said yes, that is the procedure.Why, then, is everyone checked, we asked. He had no answer.So why are they being checked if they can pass without any special criteria, we asked again? Perhaps it’s a security issue, said another soldier.People stand in different lines, behind the different turnstiles. Some for a longer while, some for less time. No one was sent back while we were there.Perhaps people pass, but they are first held up, forced to wait.The checkpoint always checks first. Checking – delaying – movement. The rest is variation.F, a friend, says bitterly: why check me, why wait if I am going to be let through in any case, why delay me for an hour or an hour and a half if they have no reason to do this. Why waste so much money on cabs to and from the checkpoint. It’s not security. Why one by one? Why?Israel has actually announced its intentions for Qalandiya Checkpoint. It will be a large terminal, which in our famous verbal laundry will be called a “border crossing”, as though this were some border between Palestine and Israel. Only blue ID holders (Israeli) will be allowed to pass. Traffic bound for Bethlehem, Hebron and the southern Westbank in general, which so far has anyway been nearly shut for residents without special permits, but was still allowed for some minimal attempts to affect soldiers on the ground to let people through – after this is done, there will be no passage at all, not even on ‘humanitarian’ grounds. For the entire road leading to the southern Westbank will become a settlers-only road. So this entire ‘permission’ to pass without any criteria is not only evidence as to the purpose of the CPs, for if people can pass now, why couldn’t they before? Why are suddenly all those suspects no longer suspect? (Suspect by reason of their IDs alone, which in itself is an interesting matter: according to the laws of Occupation, a person bearing a Hebron ID, for example, is dangerous when he tries to exit Ramallah towards Hebron or back, but an hour later, when the same person tries to enter or exit Hebron, is no longer dangerous. Whoever makes do with his own registered ‘canton’, is permitted.) So these are no longer suspect, which only proves that preventing them before was arbitrary, without security grounds, and only served as a cliche or brand through which the Occupation is marketed to us all.These are ‘the last days of Pompeii’.Everyone passing without a special permit have been seduced into believing that things are being easier for them, so they won’t disturb the peace, won’t scream, won’t say a word about what is happening in front of their very eyes, and will very soon affect their own destiny. Passage without special permit is a narcotic. Anesthetizing that which is about to happen to them. Absolute prevention with or without permit to cross the Qalandiya CP bound for the southern part of the Westbank. A sugar-coated candy so that the Occupation forces can finish the final phase of building this prison in peace.In back, construction work continues. Some ask if we know what this is.What are they building over at the quarry in ‘Tora-Bora’. A strange mixture of detached optimism and an old-timers absolute and profound knowledge that nothing of all these changes could possibly be in their favor.On the way to Qalandiya we saw a man sweeping dust. Dust that cannot be swept. He is like a person pouring air into air. Or a man washing the water. One cannot clean a world full of dust. Or be outside it. The mere sweeping of dust just adds more and more dust to whatever cannot be cleaned.He was elderly, not thin, his gaze luminous and quiet, and he was smiling.He was not insane.This man was a rebel.Like in Camus’ interpretation of the ‘Myth of Sisyphus’, about the man who pushes the boulder uphill, just to have it roll back down necessarily, a pre-ordained matter, and still, knowingly he pushes it back up, as an act of defiance, of freedom. So, in our eyes, like Sisyphus, this man, in a strange shop where nothing is sold, is walking to and fro, from nowhere to nowhere, sweeping dust in and out of himself, and this man who has chosen an absurd, radical choice, “resistent” as Yvonne and Daniela say, this man is upright.A free man.