This is Part Two, a continuation of extended excerpts from Reema Hammami’s article (from the Spring 2010 issue [No. 41] of Jerusalem Quarterly, edited by the estimable Salim Tamari), on the growth and tightening of Qalandia checkpoint — which has now become a “border terminal” between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
Her article continues: “But how was order created from chaos? … If we take just one small part of the organizing needs of the checkpoint – public transport on it’s northern [Ramallah] side – we might get a sense of what is involved. Walid, in his forties from the [Qalandia refugee] Camp, was a main transport organizer for five years on the Ramallah side of the checkpoint. Like many of the checkpoint workers, he had spent years working in construction in Israel before the checkpoints put him out of work so he began to operate a secondhand unlicensed van. He describes what happened when the checkpoint was made at Qalandiya:
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‘In the beginning it was a mess, drivers would come, there was no turn, nowhere to stand, the strong one would eat the weak one. So in the Camp we decided that we should organize it, we made a subcommittee and decided to make a stand, you know for the vans and to try organize the situation of turns. In the beginning it was all voluntary, each day a group of guys from the camp would come down and try and organize. But it didn’t work – drivers didn’t get to know them or build a relationship because it was different guys from day to day. And there were problems happening everyday, you know people fighting for turns– you needed to enforce things. So we said, we have to make a permanent group – nine guys – and they’ll take ten shekels a day from the drivers to use the stand and for the other services – the money was equivalent of half a load of people. We’d pay some to the organizers and the rest we donate to the committee. We got the political organizations in the camp to come down and speak to the drivers, to give us some legitimacy. Abu Wagih the owner of the quarry donated gravel and we fixed up a stand on the empty land about 20 meters from where the soldiers stand. And we made a system, each location together, each one by turn, one of them breaks the rules, jumps his turn and we punish him – he can’t come for a day, he gets in a fight – that’s it, he misses a day two days or he harasses the girls passing we send him off for a week. But it didn’t last – the soldiers kept running us out. strong>The soldiers would come by and start shouting over the microphone and say that’s it all of you move out or we’ll shoot – and it’s a disaster – you can’t move all at once – two three hundred vans, and they’re firing tear gas into the windows, breaking windows. …
Continue reading Qalandia Checkpoint: warping strategies of adaptation – cont'd