“Go to Surda” — The village of Surda is located northwest of Ramallah, near Birzeit. In barracks slang, it means: Get out of my sight; let someone else deal with you.

Lia Nirgad, a MachsomWatch activist, describes it in her book Winter in Qalandia:

“Surda, Surda—how many times did we hear the soldiers send exhausted people there, at any hour, in every kind of weather? We eventually understood that via Surda they could get to exactly where they would have reached if they had been allowed through the checkpoint. But to get through the checkpoint you need a tasrih (Arabic for passage permit), whereas to get through Surda you need only time and money. Twenty-five shekels for a minibus, an hour and a half on the road.”

Lia and her fellow shift members decided to check it out for themselves. They drove to Surda and then via Beit El to Adam Junction, and found themselves, after about 50 kilometers and an hour of driving, on the other side of the Qalandia checkpoint.

Yes, from there, traveling is allowed. From there, apparently, they no longer posed a security threat.

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A MachsomWatch volunteer sits in conversation with a Palestinian man in the South Hebron Hills.

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