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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Life under occupation Home page  back Print  Send To friend “You’re not allowed to use public transportation at all” Ofra Yeshua-Lyth--March 13, 2014--I arrived at 4 PM at the bus terminal (near what is called the “Shomron Gate Junction”). Until five it looked like nothing was going to happen. Blessed boredom. Travellers get on and get off, including some who look like Palestinians. A military vehicle behind the bus honked with pointless violence and suddenly activated a siren, surely that was nothing more than the simple boorishness of the soldiers who are the lords of the land. At five o’clock sharp the action begins: a policeman, First Sergeant Shai Zecharia, portentiously boards bus 286, which is stopped at the station. Soldiers order all the Palestinians to get off. Right away they collect their ID cards upon their exit from the bus. That way they can’t go anywhere until they get permission. Nearly thirty workers, ages 30-50, obediently file out. The soldier/officer roars: “Udrub!” (Move!) And then: “Sit on your butts! On your butts!” They are then marched to the terminal fence and made to stand along it in a line, then to sit on the cold ground and wait. The soldiers check the green IDs (Arabic: hawwiye) and demand to see their “tasrih” (work permits). A lucky few get their IDs back and board another bus – complaining only about having to pay twice for the same trip. But our forces immediately block this channel: one by one the workers are told to leave the terminal and walk to the Azoun-Atme checkpoint, 2.5 kilometres from the Shomron Gate junction. By now it’s cold; the sun has set. Most of them got up at three in the morning for the trip to work. Their homes are only a few kilometres from nearby Ariel. All they ask is to be allowed to ride the bus for another two or three stops. They paid for the trip. And by the way, a “tasrih” costs 8,000 shekels. You have to work hard to cover that sum before you earn your first shekel. The soldiers nabbed four workers who had dared to work without a “tasrih”. The short one venomously says, “They can spend some time in the Yoav fortress.” Then the next consignment arrives, about another 25 workers. The armed and heroic little guy is soon shoving them with both hands. The procedure is repeated: “Udrub”, on your butts, hawiyye, tasrih. Now move it to Azoun-Atme. Within half an hour about eighty men have been subjected to this humiliation by a few armed soldiers and one policeman. They all responded with restraint and dismay, at most asking the obvious questions and now and then getting enlightening replies, such as: “You’re not allowed to be on Highway 5.” At long last: official confirmation that there are apartheid highways in Israel, despite all the denials. “You’re not allowed to use public transportation at all.” First Sergeant Zecharia provided the following crucial information to one of the older Palestinians: It’s better to travel in the special vans and not in Israeli buses. Palestinians claim there has been an unwritten commercial alliance between some in the security forces and the Bedouins who operate the vans, which cost five times as much as the buses for short trips. For a trip of a few minutes, each one of them pays one or two hour’s wages. I should note that the First Sergeant answered my questions as the law requires when I asked his name and rank, but he immediately declared that my questions were “causing agitation” and that “pretty soon” I too would find myself spending a few hours in the nearby police station. On the way back, via the Ayalon Highway, my heart goes out to the thousands of Israelis who are delayed on the way home in Thursday evening traffic jams. Questions and thoughts: How many hundreds of Palestinians gone through this permanent institutionalized harassment this evening, at the end of a work week during which they cleaned, built, plastered and paved our Homeland? What is the idea behind this harassment? How is it that workers represent no “security risk” in Tel Aviv and Rishon LeZion from morning to evening, but their presence on a bus on the way home is a matter that requires the armed intervention of the soldiers of the “Israel Defence Force”? Should not those who are constantly warning us that the Third Intifada will break out any moment have an interest in obedient and industrious workers being allowed to get home in peace? (Incidentally, I have heard this observation from the workers, who may be poor but are by no means stupid) And furthermore: when a woman is told to “sit in the back” of a bus full of Haredim, Israeli society responds with anger and revulsion and we demand that the instigators of this obscurantist discrimination be stopped. But Palestinian workers are forbidden to travel in “our” buses – even in the back, and standing. And that is quite all right legally – unless something is very, very wrong with the law. How fitting it is this evening to excoriate the unknown judge who beat his unfortunate children, and the judicial system that did not deal with him severely. Because, as everybody knows, civilization, progress, human rights, the rights of the child and equality before the law are our guiding principles. Happy Apartheid Week to *all* of you! Ofra Yeshua-Lyth Translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall Links to the latest articles in this section Occupation forces injure mourners following funeral of slain infant Mohammad Tamimi Nabi Saleh village assaulted - toddler shot in the head died in hospital Palestinians in the snow: thrown from home into the snow, throw snowballs and get arrested