We left Bethlehem the morning after the wedding.
Nora and I had decided to rent a car and go around Yaffa for a day.
My friend Woody lives there, so we'd all hang out at the beach as well, something I had not done for three years.
Saturday morning meant shabat, which meant that the checkpoint was excruciating, as if someone was trying to pull a tooth using piano wires.
Soldiers dragging their feet, moping, bitching and moning a little extra, and we, the travellers would be expected to deal with their ugliness.
The old lady travelling in the bus with us had arthritis, and could not stand up during inspection. She received a scoulding by a soldier, who refused to address me in english.
I have nothing but hate for the way they treat palestinians as if they were subhuman.
This system is constructed in a way that relieves you, its subordinate of having to think when acting cruelly. Inhumanity is practice, routine, cruelty the order of the day, and any reaction to the system means putting the person reacting in his or her place, it does not require you or the structure you have been put there to defend to change.

This is a picture of checkpoint Qalandia, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and was shot last winter, with the mandatory happy greeting, to further underline the absurdity of said checkpoint system.




So this is how the system works:
To be allowed to move outside for instance Bethlehem, you need to fall under one the following categories.
Either you needA) A blue ID-cards, stating that you are a palestinian residing in Jerusalem, B) a permission to move outside of your own city, a permission issued by the israeli military, should you for instance require medical treatment unavailable in the big, illequiped palestinian hospitals, or if you for one reason or another need to be in 48 (the palestinian name for israel), or C) you have obtained a work permit, this too issued by israel, approved by the israeli military after interrogation, and possibly in exchange for information to the intelligence service.
The only other possibility to moving freely about is if you are a citizen of another country, such as Sweden, or the US.

Permits are difficult, not to say impossible to obtain, should the israelis decide that you do not deserve one. The reasons for denying you such a permit are arbitrary, and are never stated. Matters of security they say, and it is sufficient.
As a swedish palestinian the difference between myself and my palestinian countrymen becomes ever more apparent, as technically, there is no difference.
I am as brown, I am as palestinian. But it is in class markers, in language, in clothes, in patterns of movement and in whether or not the person infront of the soldier can be treated badly without any repercussions.

The restriction of movement applies to israelis also, although with no harrassment.
Should you be an israeli citizen wanting to go into the palestinian territories, you are not allowed to by law. Your own government bans you from doing so, you are not allowed to be in the West bank unless you are either a colonizer a.k.a "settler" or a soldier.
If you are a colonizer you are free to move around the West bank on roads constructed exlusively to your benefit, on land stolen and confiscated from palestinians, but you are not to travel into a palestinian town or city. If you are a soldier you venture into the same towns and cities in order to arrest, kill, cause havoc during nightly raids or other malicious reasons. Anything else is not allowed.




We are seated in the bus as a round little female soldier with makeup like a crazy person, big earrings and a cell phone with music blasting out of the speakers makes her entry.
She begins to collect all of the IDs, without even a glance in our direction. Suddenly she peers through the window of the bus, and spots a male soldier colleague, and runs out screaming with an adolescent shrieking sound, as if she were a teenager out of control, like a little meatball on steroids.
They annoy me so much, largely due to the fact that aforementioned meatballs are in control of our days. My schedule, and everyone elses on that bus, is solely dependent on that ridiculous person. Whether or not we can make our doctors appointments, if we will make it to the wedding, being able to see friends, or going to a concert.
Being powerless so that some tool soldier girl can get her hook-up on.

After a useless wait for the soldier girl to regain control of her hormone levels, we are finally allowed to leave.




David Nora and I rent a car at Ben Gurion airport.
We get into it, listening to the only CD we've brought along, the palestinian hip hop group DAM. They're from Lidd, in Palestine, what is now Lod in Israel, and we hang out with Suheil and Mahmoud on the beach in Yaffa.
Sitting in the car, looking out the window, all I see is the land under the stones, the music ringing in my ears. Stolen land, stolen history, stolen nationality, Stolen.


Here are the lyrics to one of Dams tracks.

- Mali Huriye - I Don't Have Freedom
(Featuring Ala' Azam and Anat Ig'bariye)

Tamer:
We've been like this more than 50 years
Living as prisoners behind the bars of paragraphs
Of agreements that change nothing
We haven't seen any light, and if we peek between the bars
We see a blue sky and white clouds
In the center a star reminds me that I'm limited
But no, I'm strong, staying optimistic
You won't limit my hope by a wall of separation
And if this barrier comes between me and my land
I'll still be connected to Palestine
Like an embryo to the umbilical cord
My feet are the roots of the olive tree
Keep on prospering, fathering and renewing branches
Every branch
Grown for peace
Every branch
Under the pressure of occupation
Refusing to give up
So why don't I have freedom?
Because I refuse to live in slavery

Chorus:
Everywhere I go I see borders, imprisoning humanity
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
Everywhere I go I see borders, imprisoning humanity
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?

Mahmoud:
We searched for peace between Generals
Until we all became war children
Asking for freedom from prisons that want us
With closed and blind eyes
Our eyes staring at the free children
Always keep on rolling to a better life
Our leaders only flavor their speeches
Opening their mouths but shutting out hope
We use power because of our weakness
So life will treat us gently
We saw that we don't rule our own destiny
So we tried to grasp it in our hands and it died
All we asked for was a breath
And what did we sacrifice for it?
Also a breath
So you tell me
Why can't I be free like other children in this world?
(chorus)

Suhell:
I don't want to live on my knees
I'd rather not die at all
I still see the Occupation
Reaching his hand
Not for peace, not for equality
Not to mend things between us
But to suffocate me
Here's another massacre
And a wall that's separating me myself and I
The U.S. has made it their 51st state
Cleaning the Middle East of its Indians
Hitting us then blaming us
But all the biggest armies in the world
Are weak against the hope of the children

(chorus)

Little girl reading a poem:
We want an angry generation
To plough the sky, to blow up history
To blow up our thoughts
We want a new generation
That does not forgive mistakes
That does not bend
We want a generation of giants