I was on my way to a party in Jerusalem last night and walked through the Qalandia checkpoint for the first time.  Many Palestinians, including several of my students, experience this process every day; the best way I can describe it is like going through airport security with hostile employees. The place is full of metal turnstiles and narrow pathways that truly look more appropriate for herding cattle than for containing human beings. I stood there in a crush of people wanting to get through as quickly as possible. I placed my bag on the conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector. It buzzed. I took off my coat, thinking it was the zippers or something and walked through again. It buzzed. I looked at the young, female soldier behind the glass partition and shrugged my shoulders. She took a break from yelling at the crowd in Hebrew over the PA system and said to me sternly “Go back.” A man and two women standing behind me pointed to my earrings. The jewelry! Of course! So I took off my earrings, rings, new silver necklace and finally no buzz. It was really nerve wracking. I had no idea what I was supposed to do and hearing the soldiers yell at us, watching a Palestinian man protest loudly and then seeing the soldiers go back to laughing and joking with each other was disturbing. They were so young and they looked bored.  Mind you, I didn’t have to walk through Qalandia. I could’ve called a private taxi and paid about 120 ILS or about 30$ each way. But I told myself it was something I had to learn to do, to experience and now that I know I have a choice, I might not go through it again. Yes, as an American I have a choice, I have privilege, I can afford an expensive taxi. I can do things and go places that many of my Palestinian friends cannot.  Most need a permit to travel to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is about 8 miles away from Ramallah; one friend told me he has not been there in 12 years. I could feel guilty about this, but both I and a young American woman I met at the party agreed that this was a wasted emotion that benefits no one and only makes us feel bad. She told me that when she went to Tel-Aviv she didn’t look at the sea, so she could feel what her Palestinian friends feel, but we can’t deny our privilege; in fact, we must acknowledge it.

Check out the following link for pictures of Qalandia and an article about one of the few times Palestinians were able to view the sea. http://www.ideastream.org/news/npr/159998746