Crossing

Crossings

Leaving Jordan by land takes a large amount of creativity and luck. Our cab driver arrived at 7:30 am in a friend’s personal car because cabs are not allowed to approach the border of Jordan and Israel.

“Please don’t let the police see you handing money to me. That would not be good,” our cad driver says with a smile. He is wearing a Yankees cap and speaks fondly of Kansas, having spent several years in the state.

In order to cross into Israel from Jordan, we have to exit Jordan with stamps and x-ray checks of our baggage. We then board a charter bus which takes us across the Jordan River into Israel, about a mile altogether. The difference is stark and intense. Large amounts of barbed wire decorate any fence or wall. Young soldiers with large weapons and a maze of check points and barriers force the bus to weave a path towards the border station. Our driver leans out his window at every stop and yells to his fellow drivers in search of tea or Pepsi.

At the Border

A mass of people swarm in front of the first obstacle to enter Israel, handing passports and bags to Israeli soldiers. All luggage must be checked and enters the border crossing separate from its owner. People are then herded into a building through a system quite similar to airport security in the United States; X-ray machines, metal detectors and passport checks. Following the scans, we push our way into a “booth” which shoots jets of air all over your body to create a sort of image that searches for hidden weaponry, as if anything explosive would make it this far. Our photo is also taken at this point for posterity or merely to sit in a database on a hard drive for many years to come. An hour later, the true experience of crossing into Israel begins.

Crossing at the King Hussein Bridge is illegal for Israelis, forcing the Palestinians and Arab nationals to cross at this point. Around ten percent of the people entering are foreign visitors, leaving one to think that this part of the process shall be quick and painless. Not so, as we stand for almost 2 hours waiting to speak with the border agent, who might be 18 but looks as though she should be scooping ice cream on a boardwalk in New Jersey and not wearing a uniform that barely fits her tiny frame. We each rehearse our stories so as not to raise suspicion, forcing us to think we are committing a crime and lying to cover our tracks. We are merely going to see Jerusalem and try to conduct a photojournalism project that will show what living within Jerusalem is really like, yet any mention of a Palestinian territory, Ramallah, Bethlehem, East Jerusalem or anyone with the name Ibrahim or Mohammed would be an intstant red flag causing interrogation by a twenty-something soldier bearing multiple arms and holding the power of entry in his hands. An amazing way to utilize my American tax dollars.

My travel partner’s have recently visited Syria, causing the guard to flag their passports and keep the sacred documents in a tiny office for another 2-3 hours. For what purpose is not known, my assumption after observing the process for 7 hours, is to merely create a sense of power over people and further inflame tensions of those living and visiting Israel. The more difficult the entry, the less likely people are to return. Many of those crossing are visiting Palestinian family members living as refugees in Jordan. The right of return is not granted to thousands of these refugees, so their family must suffer through such humiliation and difficulties in order to visit.

Security or Dehumanization?

What does this process mean, what are its ramifications for the people living through this on a daily basis? It provides security, you may say. The Israelis are keeping their people safe, you might argue. What I witnessed was not security. An 18-year old asking me to fill out a form she hand wrote minutes before stating where I am traveling to and to whom I am visiting is not security. Asking my grandfather’s name is not security. Asking for my cell phone number in the United States and email address is not security. Making a man who just underwent open heart surgery stand in line for 5 hours is not security. Separating families and loved ones for hours of humiliating interrogation is not security. Watching people leave the interrogation room in tears, bewildered and lost, searching for their loved ones waiting on the other side of the checkpoint is not security.

It’s a means of creating a second class citizen. It is one more method of dehumanizing a population whose homeland is occupied and whose presence is no longer desired. When an elderly Palestinian woman has to argue with a teenager sucking on a lollipop and cursing her with immense disrespect in order to enter her homeland something is not right, something is profoundly incorrect. That woman is old enough to have witnessed the creation of Israel, the death of thousands and numerous wars over the land she calls home.

I look at the office where the soldiers take a break from their duties. The young girls flirt with their older superiors, gossiping and carrying on in ways that are universal to their age. It’s a scene played out in every fast food restaurant and retail shop around the world; young adults flirting with their peers and experiencing the first tastes of adulthood. The only difference is that they are soldiers. Their uniforms bear the flags of their country, not the golden arches of their employers. They carry automatic weapons, not spatulas. These young adults make decisions that effect peoples lives and the perceptions of their identity; they do not decide if you get packets of ketchup or mustard in your order. These soldiers have no choice; they must serve their country for a certain period of time when they reach adulthood. What effect does this service have upon their outlook on life, on the role of their country in the Middle East and in the world? What does this service do to their identity and their view of the role they play in the world?

These soldiers learn power and elitism at a young age. For some, their positions give them a power that is intoxicating, a position that gives them a sense of purpose to their country and an immediate distaste and distrust of people who are of another race and religion. Such a process instills the belief that, as an Israeli they are superior to the people they are allowing to enter the country. While not every soldier embodies this assessment, you can see the implications in their interactions with the people around them, in how they treat people with a disregard and indifference.

I’ve entered several Middle Eastern countries and developing countries that also bear the burden of securing their people in an unstable environment with violent tendencies. Yet I have never witnessed such a process. Such an attack on identity made be an entire demographic of young people who should be experiencing adulthood, not further inflaming tensions in a country slowly drowning in conflict and hatred.

Sorry to end on a cliché but, I guess we are not in Kansas anymore.