Reema Hammami has called the disgraceful concrete and steel Qalandia Checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah high-tech. Is it?
A report published in February – March of this year on “TRACKING CORPORATE COMPLICITY IN THE OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE”, part of the Corporate Watch website here, says this: “Qalandiya Terminal, the crossing between East Jerusalem and Ramallah, is often the first military checkpoint visitors cross when entering the West Bank. During the second intifada, the Israeli state began transforming the old Qalandiya checkpoint into a ‘terminal’, similar to an international border. The process has cost between $32 and $34 million and has delivered hefty profits to the contractors involved”…
Does this make it high-tech?
The Corporate Watch research blog continues:
ELBIT —
“One of these contractors is Elbit, a large Israeli arms and security company whose technology can be seen all over the West Bank. People crossing Qalandiya from Ramallah to Jerusalem are monitored by Elbit CCTV cameras as they pass through turnstiles, carrying the brand or product name ‘Alarm’. They are then barked at over a tannoy [Public Address system] by soldiers inside a plate glass booth. The ‘Shamrad’ intercom system also bears the Elbit logo. Elbit has also secured a contract to provide security systems for the the Jerusalem Envelope section of the Wall (Masu’a system). For more information on Elbit, see www.whoprofits.org/Company%20Info.php?id=554.
RAPISCAN + HASHMIRA —
“Once through the turnstile, travellers belongings must be passed through a Rapiscan scanner. Rapiscan is a US company whose investors include Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings and AXA. The scanners are installed through its Israeli representative, Hashmira, Israel’s largest private security company, which is 70% owned by G4S.
For more information on Rapiscan, see www.whoprofits.org/Company%20Info.php?id=653.
For more information on Hashmira, see www,whoprofits.org/Company%20Info.php?id=595 , and www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3500.
SHLAGE – part of INGERSOLL RAND SECURITY TECHNOLOGIES —
Fingerprint recognition systems at Qalandiya are provided by Schlage, a US-based company (see here).
This information can be found through clicking a link (the last one on the page for a booklet in pdf format “of some of Corporate Watch’s recent blogs on corporations in Palestine”) on the Corporate Watch website here.
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However, all of this still doesn’t make it high-tech.
The experience of walking, or being hearded, or being squeezed in a traffic jam, while going through Qalandia is, instead, decidedly primitive…