A Guide to a West Bank Checkpoint (cool!)

Check it out, you can click on every separate aspect and find out what people normally have to go through to get through an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank.

It really gives you an idea as to how much of a DRAG it must be to have to get through as a Palestinian and ALSO to police as an Israeli.


news.bbc.co.uk...



jakomo

Interesting piece of journalism. If you check out the map, you see that permanent checkpoints like this one are almost exclusively at the Israeli/West Bank border.

Hopefully someday soon the intifada will end and these two peoples will make real progress in getting along together in peace. Then checkpoints like this will no longer be necessary.

Israeli Defense Force soldiers are not allowed to give interviews. But in informal chats with BBC News Online, soldiers stationed at checkpoints said that they felt their work was necessary.

"We're here because we have to be. We don't like it but it's our duty," said one.

"It's dangerous to be here, especially at night. People shoot at us from surrounding areas," he added.

"I feel sorry for the Palestinians who have to cross, but if we weren't here, the terrorists would go and blow us up in Jerusalem," another said.

According to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, there have been at least 38 cases since September 2000 of Palestinians who have died after medical care was delayed as a result of Israeli restrictions of movement.

An Israeli army spokesman told BBC News Online that soldiers only began checking ambulances during the intifada.

He said that there have been incidents in which ambulances have been used to carry healthy, wanted Palestinians, and that in one case an explosive belt was found in an ambulance carrying a sick child.

An explosive belt hidden in an ambulance with a sick child.