"This is a way for them to demonstrate hour by hour that they are masters over our lives,"

[I was pleasantly surprised, maybe even shocked, to find this article
in the New York Times:]

With Gaza Divided in 2, Travelers Wait and Wait
By TIM GOLDEN

ABU HOULI CHECKPOINT, Gaza Strip, June 5 — The trucks and cars wait in
a chaotic, mile-long line, their Palestinian drivers jostling for any
small space that opens in front of them.

The other people just wait: packed four across in the back seats of their
taxis, crouched in the precious shade of the trucks or standing stubbornly
in the baking sun, savoring their cigarettes and pumpkin seeds as slowly
as they can.

The worn two-lane road on which they sit is the main highway of the Gaza
Strip, running from Israel in the north to Egypt in the south. There
was a time not long ago when that drive took less than an hour.

Now it can take an entire day, or even longer. Just how long is impossible
to predict.

"Sometimes you wait until 2 in the afternoon, sometimes until 4," said
Looy al-Loh, 31, a Palestinian nurse who lives in a village just north
of the checkpoint and commutes to work at a clinic just south of it.
"Sometimes you get stuck here all night. Or you stay so you can be near
the front of the line if they open it in the morning."

Since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, the Israeli Army
has clamped down steadily on the movement of Palestinians within and
outside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials describe
the Palestinians' hardships as unfortunate but say they are unavoidable
in the effort to protect Israeli citizens and soldiers from attacks,
including suicide bombings, that have taken hundreds of lives.

In the West Bank, some Palestinian cities and towns have become isolated
enclaves, surrounded by troops and tanks. But the restrictions are nowhere
felt more sharply than by the 1.3 million people of the Gaza Strip, which
has been effectively cut in half and sometimes into thirds by checkpoints
set up in large part to safeguard the travel of Gaza's 7,100 Jewish settlers.

Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/international/middleeast/12GAZA.html


--*--
Marc Rodrigues
*Voicemail/Fax: 866.206.9067 x4217
*Students for a Free Society: http://qcsfs.tripod.com

"We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected
as a human being, to be given the right of a human being in this society,
on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by
any means necessary." -Malcolm X