Today, I picked up Mahar, a colleague, in Ramallah and then drove all the way up to Tulkarem in the northern West Bank. Mahar works with a program that provides psychosocial support and activities for traumatized children all over the West Bank and Gaza. Today, they were going to hand out school kits that were donated to ANERA from USA. I was there to take photos of the adorable children, all living in the Tulkarem refugee camp, together with10,000 other persons.

On the way there, we were stopped in a Israeli checkpoint. There were already long lines of cars and trucks on both sides of it when we arrived. We are allowed to jump the line, and however sad it is to see all the people suffering and waiting, we save hours this way.

But when we reached the front of the line, we were stopped by the soldiers. They refused to let us through, which never happens. We waited in the car.

After a while, all the soldiers took on their helmets and raized their guns in their fortified positions. Not a good sign.

Suddenly, a taxi showed up, also jumping the line. A man stepped out and started to argue with the solider. Apparently he had a sick woman in the taxi (wife? mother?) that urgently needed to go to the hospital in Tulkarem. The soldiers forced him to leave at gunpoint.

The minutes passed by, then an ambulance drove up and the same guy jumped out. After a new argument with the soldiers, the ambulance was also forced to wait. But in the end, maybe after a total of 20 minutes, the man could pass with the sick woman.

Ten minutes later, another Israeli patrol showed up in a jeep. They started to search the vechicles waiting in line on the other side of the checkpoint. After a while, two soldiers came walking with a Palestinian man in a firm grip in between them. Probably, the Army was tipped off that a wanted Palestinian was on his way towards the checkpoint. By closing it, they could catch him. If he deserved it or not, I don’t know.

This intermezzo took us some 45 minutes. All the time, 60 excited children were waiting for us in the Youth Center of the refugee camp.