Qalandiya
Qalandiya Checkpoint
The army calls it “the killing zone” – anyone who enters this area is a free kill.
In Qalandiya everyone knows it is forbidden and dangerous to enter the vehicle checkpoint on foot. Very dangerous.
But how would anyone know this who does not know the Qalandiya Checkpoint?
How could anyone who arrives here for the first time know this? Someone who has a crossing permit but no experience, and no idea who this place is run and how dangerous it is not to follow procedures here?
How were Maram and her brother Ibrahim supposed to know this?
At the spot where the small stone lay, next to the red car, just before the broken line (which is a slow-down bumper), two bodies lay – the bodies of the brother and sister, shot to death by the security personnel.
When I took only a few steps into the zone which everyone knows is forbidden and dangerous to enter on foot, because I wished to photograph “the killing zone”, a policeman and the backs of two private contractor workers – civilian security personnel employed by the “civil intelligence” – hastened to shoo away “the invader”, me. “Scram out of here!” the policeman yelled at me. “If I were not wearing a uniform, I’d tell you what I really think of you!”
As if I don’t know…
Opposite the vehicle checking post rises the closed compound of Qalandiya Checkpoint which now sports a new large Israeli flag, raised to half-mast.
The checkpoint and those serving in it are ready for follow orders.
