Jayyous, September 24, 2010
Two large buses pull up to the barrier gate and stop. The first one is filled with school boys the second with girls. The steel ten foot high fence is toped with a roll of barbed razor wire. Beyond the gate is a second gate, a yellow steel bar vehicle barrier that swings inward to open onto a road. Across on the other side of the road are duplicate gates. Passing through these four gates gives access to the homes of the school children on the buses coming from their school in the village of Habla.

When the gates open, there will be one more obstacle for the school children to negotiate: Israeli soldiers in full battle gear holding US M16 Assault rifles or Israeli Tavor Assault rifles. While they wait, some of the boys get off the bus to talk in clusters with us and one another. We avoid the hot sun by standing in the shade of the buses. The boys display some bluster as they jostle each other and crowd around the EA strangers who have come to observe the process of the crossing. We all appear to be casual and unconcerned but we join the boys in secret nervous glances through the fence to observe the soldiers who are watching us as they wait for the appointed time to open the gates.

This separation barrier is located about one kilometer inside the UN established 1967 green line separating Israel from the Palestinian West Bank. The children’s homes are on land in that zone between the barrier and the green zone. Their village school is on the Palestinian side of the barrier. Therefore, each school day the children have to pass through the gates twice, to and from school. The children experience this trip each day from the time they enter primary school. Each child must carry a school pass issued by the Israeli army. All day at school, the children are aware that there is a barrier to be crossed to get back to their homes and parents.

This day, when the gate opens, the soldiers choose to make the children wait on the buses while they let trucks, tractors, cars, donkeys and people on foot pass around the buses to be checked through the barrier. It creates quite a traffic jam. The buses are large and difficult to get around, particularly when there are also vehicles coming through from the other side. The buses are forced to back up several times to make room for passing traffic. It takes about thirty minutes for all to pass.

The soldiers then approach the buses. The drivers get off and their ID’s and passes are checked. (This morning one of the drivers was refused entry for some time. The soldiers said his permit wasn’t valid and he would have to go to the DCO office to replace it}. This time they let him pass. The soldiers then climb onto the buses to check the children’s passes. Another soldier with a camera aproaches each of two EA's. He comes very close and takes our pictures. It feels like an attempt to intimidate us.

As we watch from outside, four teenage boys are taken off. They are told that they have to cross at another gate, gate 109. Two women who are accompanying the younger children are told the same thing. The children wait on the buses while this situation is discussed and phone calls are made about this situation by Machom Watch, observing on the other side of the barrier, and Ecumenical Accompaniers on our side. Finally, after the buses have passed through and are waiting on the other side, the soldier in charge called the four boys and two women forward and let them pass to return to the buses.
When all was quiet again, we approach the soldier in charge to have some conversation. Earlier, before the buses crossed, he had asked to see our passports, suggesting that we might not be authorized to be present, even though we were not trying to cross, just observe. This time we had some preliminary conversation and then he said to us in a challenging tone, “Do you have some questions for me? Ask them. Ask anything you like.”
So I accepted his invitation. I made the observation, “I’m surprised that your soldiers gave the children such a hard time, making them wait so long, taking some off the bus along with their adult accompaniers, and checking the passes of little children.”

“We need to check their passes,” he responded, “Some of them didn’t have passes yesterday. Also, we must be strong with them because some of them will try to run away to Israel.”

I asked, “Would you agree that you have a strong army, a very powerful army?”

“Yes, of course we do.”

“And I see you are wearing a vest and you have an assault rifle. Why are you afraid of these children?”

His eyes flashed. He stepped away from me, turned and said, “I’m not afraid.”

I then talked about living in the Palestinian village of Jayyous and how hospitable the people were to us.

He replied, “Arabs will be friendly and treat you well as long as they think you’re supporting them and are on their side. You can never believe anything that they say.”

We then thanked him for allowing the four boys and two women to cross to the buses. He replied, “Don’t thank me. It was a decision from higher up. I would not have let them pass.”

This day they were all able to pass. Tomorrow the children will once again encounter this soldier and soldiers like him as their bus takes them to and from their school. Every day there will be new intimidating and humiliating encounters. At this barrier there will be unintended lessons learned, perhaps more influential than their lessons at school, as long as the separation barrier remains in place on this Palestinian land.