Jubara and Gate 753: Sunday, 28.8.05, PMObservers: Lee D., Susan L (reporting)Summary”The Birth of a Nation” was a controversial, explicitly racist, but landmark American film masterpiece – which emphasized the birthing process of the USA. In Jubara today, we witnessed the birthing of a new checkpoint, and, no doubt, we will see it grow up, mature and develop in the usual racist manner of other checkpoints: Stay tuned for “The Birth of a Checkpoint” in the days and months to come. 18:00-18:45 JubaraThe usual smoke from the rubbish dump, but no line of cars, trucks and buses winding their way from Tulkarm to Jubara “central.” The new tunnel is indeed open. From the apartheid road it is hardly visible, and it’s hard to spot traffic below. There are a few pedestrians struggling over the mounds of red earth on the sides of the road – probably trying to find a taxi on the invisible route that the Palestinians now have to put up with. Jubara “central” is quiet, now serving mainly as an entrance to Israel proper or as a way of exit and entry for the village that bears its name. The full purport of “seam line village” becomes clear on this shift. A forlorn Abu Ghatem tells us as we leave that he has not made a shekel since the tunnel opened last week. This village can easily be forgotten: there’s no evil wall being erected there, so who is to visit a rural community which is caught `twixt and between Israel proper and the security fence beyond? As we ponder Jubara “central,” a number of soldiers, freshly informed, come up to us briskly and brightly tell us that, as Israeli citizens we’re allowed to go through the gates up to the village, and that “there’s a new checkpoint there.” We’re used to history quickly being forgotten in this part of the world, but, of course, the new checkpoint is, in fact, not new, just reconfigured for the newly institutionalized occupation in this part of the West Bank. On the Jubara side, the metal wire gate still bears the sign, in three languages, of its limited opening hours, and if there’s need whom to call to open it. But a soldier informs us that this is no longer true. The gate is always manned. Gate? There are many more gates than just one. Beyond this gate is the newly tarmacked military road. Beyond, a newly heightened and newly electrified fence, beyond that a twin of the first gate, bearing the sign, “Gate 753,” and after that, the Anabta-type barricade arm. The UNICEF tents still stand, one on the Jubara side, one on the Palestinian side, more forlorn and faded than ever, but something like them is needed in this vast, endless and treeless landscape. The view is beautiful, rolling hills all around, tiny villages perched on them and an endless stream of traffic twisting its way down to the tunnel which is not visible from where we are. A few cars, usually laden with vegetables, cross at the checkpoint. One taxi passenger, a woman with small children and luggage, is refused entry to Jubara proper, and we see, later, on our way out from Jubara “central,” that she’s gone with the taxi down to the tunnel and enters Israel with the usual wheelbarrow man taking her luggage from the taxi (where that stops we don’t know), up the dirt path to the taxis in the parking lot in so-called Israel proper. In the still of the vast, silent landscape, the “blues” emerge from a radio in the soldiers’ newly erected position (still hardly worthy of the nomenclature) tin roofed shack, at the side of the security road. Two concrete boulders `neath a piece of metal sheeting, but that’s it. For the waiting Palestinians, very few, of course nothing, But there are already four concrete boulders, perhaps a token of the concrete lines to come? And there are three young men, lounging against them, detained for the usual checking. The manning of this checkpoint is indeed new, and it becomes clear that rules and regulations are still in the formative stage. One soldier, wearing the type of cap seen during disengagement in Gaza, comes over to explain to us what’s going on with opening hours at this checkpoint. “6:00 in the morning, or around that time” (echoes of Irtah)? Besides him, three officers: one major, communicative, a lieutenant and a second lieutenant – all of them helmetless. Two other soldiers, one in floppy Australian style headgear, one of them an Arab speaker, shuttle back and forth between waiting Palestinians and the checkpoint “headquarters” a few meters away. Questions are relayed to the officers who glance at sheaves of paper in their hands, telling us that “the rules change every minute.” But all the makings of a checkpoint proper are already there: young males who are detained and have to wait; people who are told to go a long way around – notwithstanding toddlers and the fact that they’re going to enter Israel proper a short time later in any case; no protection from the elements; no attempt to ease the plight of the Palestinians. The heartless and racist occupation continues.