Israeli checkpoints reinforced as Palestinians face new controls

On Christmas Eve the south-bound road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem was open.

We swept through the Israel checkpoint's outward lane and along the main thoroughfare below the Church of the Nativity. It was just like the good old days before movement between Israel "proper" and the Palestinian self-rule enclaves was restricted to those with the correct permits and passports.

The next morning the Israeli checkpoint had been reinforced and a new regime established for those passing through from either side. To enter the not-so-little town where Jesus had been born 2001 years earlier, we had to walk downhill along a narrow sandy path to the glassed-in office where a soldier inspects documents and gives the nod to go forward. Only foreign passport holders and Palestinians with the coveted blue Jerusalem identity card go through. The new arrangement is egalitarian. Foreigners walk the same route with Palestinians, taking taxis to and from the checkpoint on either side. Non-Israelis who come in cars may have to wait anywhere from 10 minutes to four hours to creep from one side to the other.

To enter Jerusalem from the north, non-Israelis must cross from Ramallah at the large Kalandia checkpoint, preferably walking because the crawling line of vehicles can stretch for a few hundred metres to a kilometre or so. At 8 a.m. on Christmas Eve, soldiers manning the Kalandia checkpoint ordered Palestinian men and women to stand in separate lines while their documents were examined.

Then the soldiers, armed with M-16 assault rifles, went down the line of women and picked out the pretty girls, telling them to stand in a third line where they were verbally abused and jostled until an Israeli officer turned up and ordered the harassment to stop. The soldiers on duty that morning were not Israelis but Lebanese from the "South Lebanon Army" militia which acted as Israel's surrogate force during the 15-year occupation of south Lebanon.

These are only two of the 100 permanent and ad-hoc checkpoints the Israelis have installed in Gaza and the West Bank, dividing these small territories into 200 small, sealed pockets of Palestinian habitation. The only highway open and easily accessible to Palestinians leads to the Jordan River where they cross three more Israeli checkpoints into the Kingdom of Jordan.