Permits | UN-Truth

Total closure of the West Bank for ten-day Jewish holiday of Pesach which celebrates freedom

The announcement of the IDF spokesperson, published today here, says, in full, that:
In accordance with the directives of the Minister of Defense and as part of the situation assessments adopted by the defense establishment, a general closure was implemented in the Judea and Samaria region yesterday, Sunday, April 17th, 2011 at 23:59. The closure will be lifted on the night of Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 at 23:59, in accordance with security assessments. For the duration of the closure, persons in need of medical attention, humanitarian aid or exceptional assistance will be permitted to pass for care. The passage of journalists will also be permitted. Christian Palestinians holding the relevant permits [emphasis added] will also be permitted to pass in order to celebrate the Easter holiday”.

Now, we learn, the bureaucracy of the Israeli occupation extends even to babies, who are now required to have permits to visit Jerusalem at Easter time. From a Tweet by @jbaboun, a photo of a permit given to an infant is posted here, accompanied by her own comments. She also wrote a post about this on her own blog here, which also shows her own permit, which she apparently tore up into four pieces as a protest:

The IDF and Christmas in the Holy Land

The IDF has announced its “goodwill gestures that will be implemented for the Christmas holiday … from Sunday, December 19th 2010 until Thursday, January 20th 2011 [i.e., through the Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian celbrations of Christmas]:
* Christian Palestinian residents of the Judea and Samaria [West Bank] Region (regardless of age) will be permitted to cross into Israel for the duration of the entire Christmas celebrations, including lodging.
* 300 Christian Palestinians will be permitted to travel via the Ben Gurion International Airport for the duration of the holiday, subject to security assessment.
* 500 Christian Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip over the age of 35 will be permitted entry into the Judea and Samaria [West Bank]region and into Israel for religious and family gatherings. The permits will be given subject to a security clearance.
* 200 Christian residents of Arab countries will be permitted to enter the Judea and Samaria Region [West Bank] during the holiday.
The IDF will continue to operate in order to ensure that the Christian population in the Judea and Samaria Region [West Bank] can celebrate the Christmas Holiday”.

Though the Christian population in the Holy Land has dwindled from over 20 percent to something like 2 percent now, those quotas given in the IDF “goodwill gestures” listed above are very, very small — if they are even implemented [for the past couple of years, the Gaza quotas were not filled, or, not in an appropriate way] …

The Fourth Friday in Ramadan at Qalandia checkpoint: Segur (CLOSED) + Machsom Watch Report on the Third Friday

On Thursday, the IDF announced a “total closure” of the West Bank until “after” (whatever that means) the Jewish New Year holiday of Rosh Hashona.

On Friday, the fourth and last Friday of the sacred month of Ramadan, there were relatively few Palestinians at the main Qalandia checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem — but there were still thousands.

And many of them were people with permits to go to Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, where nearly every Palestinian Muslim longs to be, as much as possible, during Ramadan. Many of these people came, with their permits, from far reaches in the northern West Bank, from Nablus, and Jenin, as well as from Tulkarem and elsewhere — only to find that their permits were no longer valid.

They were not told why.

One of the veteran observers from Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch, an organization of Israeli women who monitor the abuses at the checkpoints) explained that all the permits were cancelled when IDF the closure order was given on Thursday.

But the soldiers didn’t even bother to say this. All they said was SEGUR — “closed”, as in “completely closed”.

Continue reading The Fourth Friday in Ramadan at Qalandia checkpoint: Segur (CLOSED) + Machsom Watch Report on the Third Friday

Restrictions on Palestinian workers tightening, checkpoint problems growing

Yaakov Katz has reported in the Jerusalem Post that “The IDF will begin on Friday [1 May] to sanction Palestinian workers who stay in Israel beyond the time allotted to them in military-issued permits, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Under new guidelines that go into effect on Friday and were approved by OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Gadi Shamni and the head of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Palestinians could lose their work permits if they exceed the approved time limit. Some permits allow Palestinians to remain overnight in Israel while others allow them to enter Israel in the morning and return to the West Bank by nightfall. ‘The sanctions will not be immediate but will begin at a later stage’, one official said … It was not clear what the sanctions would include, but officials said that if the workers did not abide by their permit’s conditions they could lose them. ‘Staying in Israel illegally is a dangerous phenomenon that involves criminal and terrorist activity’, the official explained. ‘This is a security precaution’. In addition, the IDF will only allow Palestinian workers into Israel via 13 West Bank crossings that use computerized systems to record identities and times. Starting Friday, the Palestinians will also have to return exclusively via these computerized crossings”. This report was published here.

The overcrowding is growing at the checkpoints, which are becoming fewer and fewer, as alternatives are relentlessly eliminated. The congestion at Qalandia, the main checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, is appalling. Last Wednesday, which was Israel’s Independence Day according to the Jewish calendar — and therefore a holiday, meaning less traffic, but also greater security measures — it took 45 minutes, yes, 45 minutes, just to cross Qalandia going to Ramallah.

The good women of the Israeli organization Machsom Watch [Checkpoint Watch] published a report on the Qalandia checkpoint on 26 April stating that “We arrived at Qalandia just before 7am … From the moment we arrived we didn’t stop for a moment to deal with problems that arose … The first thing we dealt with was a father with a 11 year old son who said that soldiers at the check in windows took his ‘kushan’ ( birth certificate), cut it up with scissors and told him to go home. His father said that the boy had a very important exam today and that it is crucial for him to get to school. We alerted everyone possible and achieved that the DCO representative and a policeman went to every one of the windows and looked through everything and didn’t find any birth certificate whole or cut up. It took a long time and the father refused to leave and go through Hizma although he possesses a Jerusalem resident ID. In the end the policeman let the father and the son go through without the birth certificate. The mystery of the vanished birth certificate was not solved … Today we met a young man who was shot during the Gaza war and was returning from Nablus hospital. Naturally he only had a permit to leave Gaza and not to return to Gaza. It took many phone calls to the Gaza DCO to communicate with the Ramallah DCO so that the Qalandia computer sees the end of the communication and can issue a permit or the day for the man to return home to Gaza … We met a man from a village near Nablus. He has to undergo an operation at the St John’s eye hospital [in East Jerusalem]. When we called the medical section of the humanitarian dept of the army we were told that the man didn’t supply all the necessary documents and has to return home to his doctor and do it. Nothing will be done if all the documents are not submitted … Road 443: People who live in villages close to road 443 cannot just get on it but have to go to Qalandia and proceed from there back to 443 to the gates opened to workers in settlements. Today we met two men who did just that but were not allowed to go through the checkpoint. We actually didn’t manage to figure out what the problem was and sadly had to conclude that that’s just the idea – the rules are unclear and forever changing and vague … The whole time we felt the heavy Kafkesque atmosphere all around. And that is a very important part of the way the laws of occupation are applied”. The full report can be read here.