THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Aim for checkpoints is to smooth control
Date: Sunday, October 31, 2004
Palestinians say all the wire, turnstiles are like animal pens
QALQILIYA, West Bank
Checkpoint 107, its walls painted in calming cream and light blue, is the flagship of Israel's new plan for defending itself and reducing hardship for ordinary Palestinians. It has everything from air-conditioned waiting halls to an explosion-proof cell for suicide bombers.
The doctrine says that 11 such high-tech terminals - to be built into Israel's separation barrier - will streamline control of Palestinian access to Israel and make it possible to lift some of the life-disrupting checkpoints deeper in the West Bank.
However, Israel also intends to keep some of those checkpoints ringing Palestinian towns. Palestinians say that lavish spending on holding cells, cattle-pen-type enclosures and iron turnstiles are sending an ominous message that their misery is being institutionalized.
At one of the internal West Bank checkpoints, near the village of Beit Iba north of the West Bank city of Nablus, about 600 Palestinians crowded into a waiting shed on a recent hot day. The crush from behind pushed those in the front up against the iron bars, jamming the turnstiles closed.
"We feel like animals standing in these long rows. It's like an animal shed," said Sylvia Azzar, 21, a pharmacy student at Nablus' An-Najah University, after spending two hours at the newly refurbished crossing.
Several women fainted in the afternoon heat. Young girls cried with relief as they finally emerged to have their documents and bags checked.
Baruch Spiegel, the former general assigned to revamp the roadblocks, said that his intentions are good.
"Our goal is to eliminate double checking and move most of the checks to the Green Line," he said, referring to Israel's frontier before it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.
During the past four years of fighting, roadblocks have created constant friction between harried young army recruits and large crowds of frustrated and angry Palestinians, who are often held up for hours.
SOURCE
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