Palestinians in Gaza Have Roadblock Rage

The four-hour wait at an Israeli roadblock had left Wafa Ashur exhausted and enraged--again.

In her arms, she held her 8-month-old daughter, Rawiya. Wedged between her and another passenger in the stifling taxi was her 5-year-old son, Saado, his eyes dulled with boredom and fatigue. And as far as the eye could see ahead and behind them were hundreds of other Palestinian mothers, fathers, children, workers and students, caught in what for thousands of Palestinians is a daily ritual.

Roadblocks have become the most hated and ubiquitous symbol of Israel’s military intrusion into Palestinian lives in the last 20 months. And no roadblock is more tortuous than the one here at Gush Katif, where the only north-south artery of the Gaza Strip intersects a road that connects a cluster of 15 Jewish settlements to pre-1967 Israel.

On this desolate and dusty stretch of roadway, Israel’s stated policy of sparing Palestinian civilians in its fight against militants has broken down. Here, and at dozens of other roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the endless waits at checkpoints that the army says are vital security measures have created the sort of mass misery for Palestinians that successive Israeli governments tried for decades to avoid.

In the last two years, Palestinian militants have repeatedly attacked civilian and military convoys traveling to and from Gush Katif, killing and wounding Jewish settlers and soldiers in suicide bombings and drive-by shootings. All told, the militants have killed about 20 Israeli civilians and 35 soldiers in Gaza since hostilities erupted in September 2000, according to the army.

In response to the attacks, the army has imposed what it acknowledges are draconian measures designed to separate the two peoples. They are steps that the army says it knows exact a heavy toll.

“This pressure we are putting on them is no good for us,” said Brig. Gen. Zvi Fogel, chief of staff for the army’s southern command. “When normal civilians are kept here for hours, they become angry and frustrated. We know that if the situation goes on like this for a few more months, the potential for suicide bombers will be much greater.”

Fogel said he is trying to limit the hardships imposed on Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians as the army tries to protect the 8,000 Jewish settlers living in closely guarded communities scattered among them. But in a conflict where Palestinian teenagers and even women are now carrying out suicide attacks on Israelis, anything resembling normality is becoming a fading memory for most of the people living here.

“It is purely harassment, to blackmail us,” fumed Abdel Rahman Katrousi, an engineer with the Palestinian Authority who was stuck at the Gush Katif roadblock on the same day as Ashur. “They would love to make us surrender. This is a prelude to transfer.”

He was referring to a concept once embraced only by the radical fringe of Israeli politics that is gaining popularity with the right wing as the fighting wears on and Israeli casualties mount. Under such a “transfer,” large numbers of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be voluntarily or forcibly expelled to neighboring Arab states.

Palestinians say they believe it is not just out of security concerns that the Jewish state blocks their roads, barricades their towns and bans their workers from entering Israel. Many believe that the measures are meant to deny them the possibility of earning a living or leading a productive life, and force them to emigrate.

Katrousi, who lives in Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border, said he leaves at 8 a.m. every day for what used to be a half-hour commute to his office in Gaza City. These days, he said, he is lucky if he makes it to work by 11 a.m. Sometimes, he arrives as late as 1 p.m.

“Basically, I sign in and turn around and come back,” he said gloomily. “Then I wait here for I don’t know how long. One time, it took me 36 hours to get home.”

Other Palestinians take extraordinary measures to avoid the long lines, even driving on the beaches of the Gaza Strip.

Fogel vehemently denies that the army is trying to make life impossible for Palestinians. “The settlers of Gush Katif need the Palestinian workers, and the Palestinians need the settlements as places to work,” he said.

It takes too long for vehicles to pass through the Gush Katif roadblock, Fogel acknowledged, but Palestinian civilians are suffering because “we have become much more suspicious of the population.” On the day that Ashur and her children and several hundred other Palestinians ended up sleeping at the roadblock, he pointed out, soldiers had found weapons in some cars, wanted militants in others.

“We arrested 23 people that night,” he said. Some, he said, were trying to carry out attacks on the settlers.

Over the protests of Palestinians and some settlers, the army is in the process of completing a $3-million east-west overpass that will allow the settlers of Gush Katif to drive on a bridge over the intersecting north-south artery on which the Palestinians drive.

The bridge is guarded by two reinforced concrete towers equipped with night-vision devices and other high-tech systems, Fogel said.

It is lined on either side with concrete blocks that make it impossible to see who is driving on it from below.

The army has destroyed orchards and homes around the bridge where attackers might lurk and intends to fortify its underbelly to protect it from suicide bombers driving on the Palestinian road that passes beneath.

The general dismissed criticism from some settlers who have said they will boycott the bridge as unsafe because it separates them from the Palestinians and makes them easy targets for attack.

On the contrary, he said, the bridge will both protect settlers and “act almost as a highway for Palestinians” once it is completed, he said.

Palestinians traveling north-south will be able to do so with far fewer waits at the roadblock once settlers are driving safely overhead, Fogel said.

And those few Palestinian workers who still have jobs in Gush Katif will soon be given magnetic cards and passed through roadblocks where computers will confirm their identities.

South of the settlement bloc, soldiers are building a checkpoint that the general said will function “like an airport terminal” for workers who now wait an hour or longer to be searched and allowed into the settlements.

“It should reduce the waiting time in the mornings to about 20 minutes,” Fogel said.

But few of the people stuck daily at the Gush Katif roadblock believe that the remedies Fogel speaks of will be implemented soon, or will improve their lives when they are.

Like everyone else in line the afternoon of June 2, Ashur had no idea when the cars ahead of her would begin to move, when the soldiers would decide to let them through. She only knew that the trip from nearby Khan Yunis to Gaza City that used to take 20 minutes each way now routinely takes six hours round trip.

She must make the trips, Ashur said, because Gaza City has the only hospital here capable of operating on Rawiya to correct her clubfoot. For the last month, she has taken Rawiya in for tests at least twice a week.

“On Wednesday, when I was coming back from the hospital, they closed the roadblock at 1 p.m. and we had to sleep here, in the taxi, until 4:30 Thursday morning,” Ashur said. “There is no one to leave Saado with, so I must bring him. I tried to approach the soldiers, to explain about the baby. They told me: ‘Go away.’ I have to just wait and wait. What can I do?”

The roadblock has opened opportunities to some enterprising Palestinians, among them young boys who “rent” themselves to drivers. The army requires at least three passengers per vehicle, a safety precaution meant to reduce the risk that a vehicle will be used for a suicide attack, the Palestinians explained.

When a driver is alone, or has just one passenger, he “rents” boys who stand on the side of the road, paying them about 50 cents to make the slow, sometimes dangerous trip past the checkpoint.

“I make the trip twice a week, every Saturday and Tuesday,” said Ramzi abu Taha, a 35-year-old engineer who commutes between his home in Rafah and his office in Gaza City. From Saturday until Tuesday, he said, he sleeps in Gaza to avoid the commute. Munir Elghawage, a slip of a boy who said he was 14 but looked much younger, sat beside him in his taxi.

“I picked him up,” Taha said. “I’ll pay him a couple of shekels for making the ride. We have to keep coming through. We have to resist. We have no choice.”

In the last few months, roadside stands have sprung up to sell those stuck here everything from falafel sandwiches to sweets.

Ayman Moussa opened his stand a month ago. He sells falafel sandwiches for about 20 cents apiece. “My customers are always exhausted,” said Moussa, 35, who sold cell phones before the fighting broke out. “They are frustrated and angry--imagine how you would feel, sitting in a car for 10 hours.”

The day that hundreds were trapped at the roadblock overnight, Moussa said, he sold 1,000 sandwiches. But other days, the roadblock suddenly opens “and I have to throw food out.” Still, he said he is confident enough that the situation will continue that he plans to bring in a generator, install a refrigerator and expand his menu.

Gesturing to the men and boys playing cards, drinking coffee or huddling in groups near their cars, Moussa said the long waits are hardest on the women. “There is no bathroom here,” he said. “In our culture, they cannot simply get out of their cars and relieve themselves on the side of the road. It is very, very difficult for them.”

All around, boys carrying pots of steaming tea and coffee or boxes of ice cream bars wove among the parked cars and vans, peddling their wares. Four busloads of teenagers from a technical school run by the United Nations in Gaza City played cards under scraggly bushes that provided scant shade and talked about the rage they feel as they sit here every day.

“Sometimes, it can take five or six hours to get to school,” said Abram Arbashli, an 18-year-old from Khan Yunis. Several dozen boys leave school by 4 p.m. and sometimes arrive home by midnight. The boredom, he and others said, is hard to cope with.

As they spoke, a fight broke out between two boys. Dozens quickly joined in, and a brawl ensued until adults stepped in to break it up. Such fights, the youths said, are commonplace as tempers fray.

But all said they have never considered quitting school. “We have to continue our education,” Arbashli said. “In two more months, I’ll have my diploma.”