How To See Palestine: An ABC of Occupation

Q is for Qalqilya

Everywhere you look in Palestine, there’s detritus—discarded packaging, demolished housing, unfinished settlements, abandoned cars, electrical components, trash and waste of all kinds. In Area C, most of the ‘West Bank,’ no one is authorized to pick up trash—the PA has no authority and the IDF could care less. In the refugee camps, the United Nations steps in. Elsewhere, it piles up or people burn it, contributing to the omnipresent smog.

It is not haphazard, this mess. As Mary Douglas taught us long ago, where there is dirt, there is system. The system here is about moving labor to create value and reducing human value.

Outside the Qalqilya checkpoint at the end of the day, after the last few workers have returned around seven thirty at night, crossing back into Palestine from Israel where they work, no one hangs around. To be sure of getting through in time for work, people will begin queuing again at 2 a.m. to be well-placed when the checkpoint opens at six. It processes one person at a time. Around four thousand will go through.
 
And so coffee cups, soft drink bottles, bus tickets, and candy wrappers pile up, signs of lives lived in transit. As they sediment into the ground, the impermeable plastics and metals will await some future archaeologist, one who will note with surprise the sudden collapse of a short-lived but apparently consumer-oriented society. They will puzzle over the fences and walls: what purpose could they have served? Perhaps a new legend, like that of Joshua and the walls of Jericho will have been created. It’ll be a long wait for these new investigators, evolution takes place in deep time. The plastics, metals and rocks won’t mind.
 

This page has paths:

This page references: