Teargas, bullets and a Cage: Getting to School in Palestine

(Beit Hanina, Palestine, 6 May 2002)---The breaking points are sometimes small, innocuous. You can't sleep for a week because the Israeli shelling is so bad, there are continuous and horrible reports of death, but we're fine- "I'm fine. No, I'm ok. Really."--- then something as silly as trying to fold an omelette in the frying pan, it breaking, and then- the tears fall.

But other times, your numbness breaks at what you are seeing in front of you. 6am at Qalandia checkpoint. As I approach the checkpoint I am amazed at the line-ups. Is The Cage gone? It seems as though there are just line-ups...but as I get closer I see that it is still there- the 10-foot high fence wire cage where the Palestinians are lined up to be able to cross the checkpoint.


I stand in the line, the one which is vaguely for women, children and older men. But the lines are not moving. The checkpoint in enclosed in thick spools of barbed wire; some women crossing from the other side get their dresses caught as they try to step over it. One woman -carrying her small child- trips on a stray sandbag, but manages not to fall into the sharp grey metal.