Late last month, on the eve of the Shavuot holiday, my sister, her friend and I went to listen to the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was being hosted at the Palestine Festival of Literature in Ramallah.
We drove to Ramallah via the Qalandiya checkpoint, which as usual was noisy and crowded and reminiscent of a war zone in a developing country.
But because of the traffic jams, we were afraid we wouldn’t get there in time to hear Coates talking about white supremacy and the battle for racial justice, which is common to both Palestinians and African Americans. So we gave up on the checkpoint to hunt for another way into the city.
The road that wound through Jewish settlements and Palestinian villages felt like it went on forever, but in the end we got there. We entered beautiful Ramallah, so full of contradictions, and went straight to the sleek neighborhood where the upper class lives.
At the event there were beautiful people, a progressive atmosphere and a mix of languages, with Palestinians, staffers from nongovernmental organizations and learned guests from abroad. For a moment I felt like I was in New York, not a mere 15 minutes from the city’s Amari refugee camp.
We entered the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, located in a beautiful stone building surrounded by gardens, with a gate that reminded us of the Palestinian homes in Jerusalem’s most prestigious neighborhoods. The event began. Writers from the global south spoke about literature as an act of resistance. Mohammed El-Kurd interviewed Coates, and he spoke honestly and humanely, but I got depressed by the reality.
The truth, I thought to myself, is that with all due respect to solidarity and a common enemy – white supremacy – the Palestinians are in a much worse position than the African Americans. We’re dealing with a racist, colonialist settler project based on a biblical commandment and a divine promise. But for an hour and a half, it was pleasant to imagine the entire global south uniting and defeating the forces of evil.
Cut. Let’s get back to reality, to my home, the only democracy in the Middle East. We went toward Qalandiya because now it was supposed to be less crowded; it was no longer rush hour.
I was driving, and as I got closer to the checkpoint, traffic slowed and slowed and slowed. Vehicles crowded next to me from every side; we were all being squished together.
I felt like I was in a pressure cooker. I noted that all the cars bore Israeli license plates – people returning from a night out, or a family visit, or a lecture at the literature festival. In the end, we were all funneled into the Israeli checkpoint so guards could check who we were, where we had been and what we had in our trunks.
For the moment, I didn’t care about the inspections, I just wanted to reach the checkpoint. But an hour and a half later, nothing had budged. We hadn’t gotten more than a kilometer. I’d had it. We decided to turn around and look for a more humane checkpoint. I somehow managed to U-turn and go back in the other direction.
It took us 30 minutes to get to the next checkpoint, which was just past Beit Nabala. “You can’t enter here,” an Arab soldier told me. “This is a checkpoint for diplomats.” Stunned, I begged him to have some consideration for us; I just wanted to get home. But he couldn’t help me. I turned around.
I’d been trying to leave for three hours already. I felt trapped in the city, looking for a way out. Then I recalled a sign I saw at the entrance to the city. I asked people, they gave me directions, and I drove for another hour in a new direction.
We finally arrived, and I recognized the road. There was a checkpoint, but it was abandoned. Farther down the road was another checkpoint, which hadn’t been abandoned. We got through. Now I was on the Ramallah-Nablus road. It would only take another two hours to get home.
Israel’s checkpoints make leaving the city a twisted journey. The only compensation was the reason we went there: a talk on the battle for racial justice.
Leaving Ramallah, Checkpoint by Checkpoint
21
15
05.06.2023
Late last month, on the eve of the Shavuot holiday, my sister, her friend and I went to listen to the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who was being hosted at the Palestine Festival of Literature in Ramallah.
We drove to Ramallah via the Qalandiya checkpoint, which as usual was noisy and crowded and reminiscent of a war zone in a developing country.
But because of the traffic jams, we were afraid we wouldn’t get there in time to hear Coates talking about white supremacy and the battle for racial justice, which is common to both Palestinians and African Americans. So we gave up on the checkpoint to hunt for another way into the city.
The road that wound through Jewish settlements and Palestinian villages felt like it went on forever, but in the end we got there. We entered beautiful Ramallah, so full of contradictions, and went straight to the sleek neighborhood where the upper class lives.
At the event there were beautiful people, a progressive atmosphere and a mix of languages, with........
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