Rose Asaf
Occupied Palestine ’48
Zochrot
My experiences at Israel military checkpoints illuminated the material implications of apartheid and the colonial logic of the occupation, humiliation, and domination of Palestinians. The ostensible purpose of the checkpoints is to screen whoever comes into Israel to prevent terrorist attacks like those that happened in the Second Intifada. This is the justification also given for the sprawling Apartheid Wall. The reality, however, is that these supposed security tools are offensive rather than defensive measures.
According to many Palestinians I met, there are countless ways to cross into the 1948 territory without going through a checkpoint. The Apartheid Wall is not built on 40% of the Green Line, and there are many areas that are crossed frequently by Palestinians. Many people pointed out to me that the Israeli Occupation Forces are well aware of areas Palestinians can cross to enter Israel, and that they tacitly allow it. The Palestinians who enter Israel on a daily basis are usually men going to work. Without the income they bring back to the West Bank, economic conditions would be much worse. Israel knows that deterioration of economic conditions functions in tandem with anger, hostility, and radicalization.
All this is to say that if Palestinians wanted to attack Israel, they would not need a checkpoint to do so, which is a fact the Israeli government knows well. So, when Zionists make statements saying that the wall and checkpoints help curb suicide attacks, such statements are intentionally disingenuous. The reason suicide attacks ended, as many Palestinians have pointed out to me, is that tactics of resistance have changed, and leadership has decided that its followers should no longer engage in such activities.
So what, then, are the purposes of the checkpoints and the wall, if not to protect Israel? All one must do to understand the logic behind the checkpoints and wall is to look at what they ultimately accomplish and materially enact: they inhibit and control movement for Palestinians, significantly lengthen travel times, ban entry to certain areas of their own land, humiliate Palestinians, and reinforce the quotidian psychology of domination.
In my next post, I will discuss two poignant and revealing experiences I had at military checkpoints.