Jalame is Open, but with Restrictions
Israel has opened Jalame crossing to Palestinian citizens of Israel for the first time since 2000. Jalame is located in the far northern tip of the West Bank. Since the wall has been completed in this area, the residents of West Bank villages, as well as of the Arab villages inside of Israel who are often the relatives of people on the other side, have been prohibited from crossing here to see each other.
In 2005, the Israelis built a huge terminal, like the one at Qalandia but three or four times the size. I walked through it once into the West Bank when they had just completed construction, and there were as many as eight of those tall, narrow metal turnstyles, and a maze of pathways lined with chain link, not unlike a place where you keep cattle before slaughter.
The second time I had an experience with Jalame, it involved sitting for five and a half hours on the Jenin side. The soldiers manning the crossing told me and my friend, two US passport holders, to wait just one more hour and they would open the terminal. After an hour passed, they said wait one more, and on and on. In the end, we were told that this crossing is for Palestinians with passes only, and we have to go down south to Qalandia to enter Israel. I am relating this story not to show that we got a little bit of the Palestine treatment simply because of which side of the electric fence we were on (while it’s interesting also how people, animals, you name it, become ethnicized simply by being on the wrong side), but to show how we then saw what no news agency has yet gone to film: the throngs of workers returning home at nightfall from Israel, faces lined and tired spilling one after the other through the metal gates, trying to fit three bodies through a space for one racing each other for taxis so they can arrive home, sleep, and leave again at 3 am.
This is what Jalame terminal was built for: to allow an entry for cheap labor from Jenin, to render that labor invisible, and to effectively choke the city’s economy into submission. The labor is in fact invisible. These people, mainly Palestinian men and some women, go to work in Jewish areas throughout the north of Israel at 3 am, and return to their homes at 5 or 6 pm. No one will ever see the state of those homes. No Israeli passes the opposite way. Unless it is to take part in the Occupation- in that sense, MOST Israelis have seen at one point or another what has been rendered invisible to them in their everyday lives.
The opening of the terminal to Arabs on the Israeli side is a positive move, but comes only after the wall and restrictions on movement have served to make Jenin completely invisible to those who live only ten minutes away. In Shefa Amr, where I am living now and incidentally the second largest Palestinian locality in Israel, peoples’ eyes practically bug out of their heads if I tell them I went to Jenin. You went to JENIN? People will tell you that they used to go, the market was cheap, we had friends there. This rug is from Jenin, or these glasses. But this was before the Intifada. Now, the only people who go are those who have family, or another pressing personal reason to take advantage of the movement privileges that come with an Israeli passport. Why else would you travel two hours to the nearest crossing in the Wall, and subject yourself to the checkpoints and treatment you will certainly receive from the Israeli soldiers along the way?
Until now, the nearest way for someone on the Israeli side of the Wall in the north to get to family just on the opposite side has been to drive south as far as Tul Karm and then backtrack parallel to the road you just took, heading north inside the West Bank. (In fact my description is simplified- since the main highway to Jenin has been made off-limits to Palestinian use, a windy and convoluted road through the mountains suffices.)
Palestinian citizens of Israel have been the drivers and primary occupants of the public transportation that I have taken to visit Jenin over the past two years. It’s the proximity that gets me every time. You can see Nazareth and Afula from roads just outside Jenin, not to mention all of the villages along the Wall. If you begin driving from one point in a southern direction, cross into Israel, and then continue back north, you end up looking down on where you were two and a half hours previous.
It remains to be seen how long it will take for people to actually begin crossing from Jalame to visit Jenin. The restrictions reported are as such:
Under the new rules, the IDF barred those younger than 18 from entering Jenin and said all the travelers must return to the terminal before nightfall, where they will be subjected to security questioning, according to a flier given to those who crossed.The crossing will be open to an estimated 100 Israeli Arabs per day, Sunday to Thursday, Palestinian officials said. A Defense Ministry official said the plan was to increase the number and over time to allow more travelers to enter.
Return before nightfall for questioning? If I go with a friend from inside, we’ll just as well make the 3+ hour trip down to Tul Karm and back, thank you very much.
