I decided to drive to the Jab’a military checkpoint, located between Ar-Ram and the Gush Etzion illegal settlement, south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank.
I had heard about an incident that took place there a couple of days earlier: according to reports, a Palestinian woman approached the checkpoint and when Isreali soldiers carried out a body search, they found a knife. Therefore, the woman had been transferred for questioning.
I got closer to the Israeli soldier and told him that I wanted to park there. “Do not shoot me,” I said.
“No problem, we don’t shoot just anybody,” he replied.
I asked him about the woman who was questioned a couple of days before, but nobody at the site seemed to know anything about it.
I tried to identify her, and find out what had happened to her, but nobody was able to confirm the story that I had read in the news.
It was as if that woman had never existed.
– As a member of Machsomwatch, Tamar Fleishman documents events at Israeli military checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Her reports, photos and videos can be found on the organization’s website: www.machsomwatch.org. She is also a member of the ‘Coalition of Women for Peace’ and a volunteer in ‘Breaking the Silence’. Tamar Fleishman is The Palestine Chronicle correspondent at the Qalandiya checkpoint.
