Night of Power – Laylat al-Qadr 2008

A friend, who took these pictures, wrote me that “I can estimate more than 500,000 [people — possibly a record] were there tonight, from all over the country, even from Jordan. Everybody was extremely happy to be there, people would share the checkpoint experience but overall are happy to make it to the mosque. Many teams were on the floor to help people reach the different facilities and separate men and women, other teams were deployed to give medical assistance. One man from the Old City was giving free “Hamra and Baida” (in English red and white) a famous desert from Jerusalem. The Old City streets were busy and overloaded with people, till after midnight…

NOW, how did these people get there? There were flying checkpoints all over East Jerusalem.
People who arrived in East Jerusalem cars parked wherever they could – and even where they couldn’t.
It is a mystery where all these people, who willingly underwent great stress and hardship, some coming from the far reaches of the West Bank and passing through serial checkpoints, were able even to go to the bathroom, or to wash afterwards before prayers — facilities were severely limited, or lacking.

People got through on good will, and by spiritual uplift.

And those who came from the West Bank through the infamous Qalandia “border crossing” checkpoint, well, they went through a lot, and that’s a huge understatement.

Here are photos courtesy of Tamar Fleishman of Machsom Watch, who observed the passage of Palestinians through Qalandia. She told me that “The control was very strict, and it was very tense, very tense, but it didn’t come to shooting or stones. Instead, the army every time just took the young men to the military vehicles inside the checkpoint, and they just disappeared. That’s what happened to the shebab“, she said. She added that “it was very sad to see all those people coming such long distances, from Jenin, and everywhere, and then some being turned away…it was very ugly the way they were treated, like cattle, having to pass through one point for checking to another”.

James Weatherill of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that it had been very crowded — the most crowded Friday of Ramadan to date. “The IDF did take our recommendation to open up a humanitarian lane”, he said, “but they didn’t manage it well. At one point, they were letting only those with Jerusalem ID use the humanitarian lane, but we managed to get it back. We had 15 volunteers from the Palestinian Medical Relief Society helping us. However, we would often have to wade into the crush of the crowd when we saw people having trouble, to pick them out and help them get through to the humanitarian lane”. The humanitarian cases were defined as anybody having any difficulty walking, or blind, or with heart conditions (documented), or over the age of 70.