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Backed-up border frustrates Arabs
Date: Tue, Aug 17, 2004
By Joel Greenberg Special to the Tribune
In baking midsummer heat, Mahmoud Abdel Rahman sat on a bench in a garbage-strewn lot outside a Palestinian border terminal here, grimly contemplating the days ahead.
On his way to Jordan, he had come to Jericho with his brother and daughter at dawn Sunday morning after a three-hour journey from his village of Beit Surik, only to learn that their turn to cross the border would come in nine days.
Returning home was out of the question, because of the web of Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank that turn ordinary trips by Palestinians into hours-long ordeals and can shut roads at a moment's notice. A modest hotel room in Jericho was beyond Abdel Rahman's limited budget.
So he and his relatives prepared to spend the night in the refuse-covered lot with other Palestinian families waiting to cross the border, sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes and tattered bedding.
"Look at this garbage," he said, surrounded by mounds of food wrappers and empty bottles littering the lot. "If things here were organized and fair, everything would run smoothly. This is Palestinian chaos."
The bottleneck at the Jericho border crossing at the height of the summer vacation season has all the ingredients of the everyday predicament of ordinary Palestinians. Caught between their own inefficient government administration, Israeli military restrictions and border arrangements over which they have little control, Palestinian travelers often find themselves in limbo.
Last month, nearly 3,000 Palestinians were stranded for more than two weeks on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) after Israel shut the only crossing at Rafah, saying militants were planning an attack there. The Palestinian Authority (news - web sites) rejected an Israeli offer to move travelers through a different border crossing into Israel.
Because of nearly four years of violent conflict, Israel no longer allows Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites) to travel abroad through Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv. With no airport of their own, Palestinians can only leave through Jordan or Egypt.
In Jericho this summer, the departure has become a nightmare. The border crossing, named after a Jordanian town nearby, is Al-Karamah, which means dignity in Arabic. But the long delays at the crowded terminal have become an exercise in humiliation, travelers said.
Majdi Bushnak, 38, a Palestinian who lives in Kuwait, was still waiting at the terminal Sunday, five days after he arrived with his family following a visit to relatives in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. Two of his small children, 4-year-old Dana and 3-year-old Samer, were sleeping on a blanket on the floor. He said they were both running a high fever.
Bushnak said his family spent the night sleeping outside the terminal after leaving a bug-infested Jericho hotel.
"I feel disgusted," Bushnak said. "I feel not human."
Busnhak said that although he was assigned a departure number by Palestinian police at the terminal, there was no way of knowing for sure when he and his family would finally leave. He said he paid the equivalent of nearly $85 to someone who promised to get his family quickly on a shuttle bus across the border, but the man vanished with the money.
Travelers said that many people were paying middlemen or using personal connections with Palestinian officials to speed their departure and avoid the long wait. But hundreds of others were waiting in the terminal, sitting on long benches or crowding around reception windows manned by police officers.
On the floor in one corner of the hall, Hana Abu Safi, 30, a mother of five from the village of Yatta near Hebron, sat next to her sleeping son, whom she and her husband were taking to Jordan for medical treatment. She produced a slip of paper that carried their waiting list number: 2,065.
The family had been waiting for five days, sleeping in the lot outside the terminal because they could not afford a hotel room, Abu Safi said. "This is the crossing of injustice and insult," she said bitterly.
Several people in the terminal blamed the Palestinian Authority for the delays and disorganization in processing the travelers. Others said the Israelis, who control the border crossing from the West Bank to Jordan, were responsible for restricting the numbers allowed across each day.
The Israel Airports Authority, which runs the crossing, pointed a finger at Jordan, asserting in a statement that the Jordanian authorities determined the number of people allowed in daily from the West Bank. The Jordanians were allowing in 40 buses a day, the statement said, adding that the Airports Authority was prepared to increase manpower and extend opening hours to ease the passage of more travelers.
Whatever the reasons for the delay, Hussain Abdullatif, a Palestinian who works as a school supervisor in Saudi Arabia, said it would be unthinkable in other countries.
"Can you see this scene anywhere else?" he asked, waiting with other travelers in the blazing sun by the side of a dusty road leading to the border. "We are human beings like you. We want to live."
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