A day in my work-life
28 April 2025: We entered the restricted area. This place has slowly turned into a giant prison. Life keeps getting harder for its residents. We live outside this area. We don’t have any other ID, foreign for example, and we’re not part of the school staff inside the zone. Usually, people like us aren’t allowed to enter.
But we decided to take a risk.
We needed to check on the schools, especially after what happened. Students were blocked from entering their school because of the Jewish holidays, and the checkpoints were shut. We sat together, thinking through every possible scenario, planning what we’d say at the checkpoints—first at the Ibrahimi Mosque checkpoint, the main gate into this unacknowledged prison.
I faced the soldier with a naive smile, one that masked my fear but still carried determination. He asked in broken Arabic mixed with Hebrew, full of the weight of occupation:
“ID? ID?”
I handed it to him.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the school”, I replied.
I waited. Every second felt like forever. My mind was full of doubts and racing with thoughts. I knew my chances were slim. Then he said “okay, go in.”
The same thing happened to my colleague. We were surprised, nervous and excited for a rare opportunity.
We walked toward the first school, passing several checkpoints. I looked around, feeling like I was seeing the place for the first time. It looked different. It felt different. The area was being openly “Israelized.” Israeli flags were everywhere.
Inside me, a voice was screaming: “I want to rip those flags down from every corner.”
We walked with quiet worry, knowing we could be stopped and sent back at any moment.
Thankfully, we made it.
At the first school, we talked to the principal and teachers. Then we moved on to another school, where we listened again, shared updates, and reconnected.
The checkpoints had kept us apart, not just by distance, but by endless restrictions. That human connection, that face-to-face presence: we brought it back. Despite the occupation’s efforts to keep us away, there we were, with emotion, reflection, and the determination to remain present.
On the way back to the office, we stopped at another checkpoint. The ‘Abed Checkpoint’ carries, for me, an unforgettable weight. It was the first checkpoint where I was ever detained. I was held for two hours back then, and ever since that moment I’ve carried a deep fear whenever I approach it. My feelings toward this checkpoint are different, and my anger towards it is greater than the anger I feel for any other. But none of them have any logic or purpose other than tightening the grip, imposing the occupation’s authority, stripping away freedom of movement, and confiscating even the simplest expressions of dignity and privacy. These are not just checkpoints – they are instruments of collective humiliation that encircle every detail of Palestinians’ daily lives, trying to strip them of the sense that they are human.
At the checkpoint, a Palestinian woman stood with two children. She was facing a female Border Officer who was yelling at her in Hebrew, but the woman only spoke Arabic. A small boy from the area, who looked distinctly Hebronite, approached and spoke to the soldier in Hebrew, then translated for the woman before quickly walking away.
When we arrived, the female soldier stopped me. She asked, in a suspicious tone: “Where are you from? Arab? Muslim?”
I answered calmly and kindly. In that moment, I hated that kindness, but it was my only weapon to help the woman. I started speaking to the woman in Arabic: “Do you need help?”
“I don’t have my ID”, she told me. “They won’t let me pass.”
I asked if she had a photo of her ID on her phone. She said yes, but the soldier refused to look at it, claiming it was “unclear”.
I immediately switched to English. I had to use every available tool, but a question kept pounding inside me: why am I treating my occupiers with such kindness? What a deadly contradiction.
I asked the soldier with a firm smile: “What’s the problem?”
“She claims she’s a resident of the area,” she said, “but I can’t verify that. The photo is blurry, I can’t see the numbers.”
Meanwhile, my colleague was trying to calm the children down, playing with them under the scorching sun. One of them, barely three years old, said: “I’m tired … What do they want from us? My mom is sad.”
My colleague hugged him and started playing simple games, to give him just a moment of safety.
I asked the woman again if her home was far. “Not far,” she replied with frustration, “but with the kids I can’t go back and forth. I pass here every day. I’m married to a man who lives here.”
“Do you have your husband’s ID?”, I asked her.
“I’ll call him so he can send a photo”, she said. But his phone was broken, and he couldn’t send a clear image.
I spoke to the soldier again in English, explaining the situation of the woman and her children. I’m not sure why I mentioned the children. Maybe I hoped it would awaken some fragment of humanity in her, if any remained. But how could I expect that from anyone who stands at a checkpoint just to oppress people … didn’t I know that over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza just for being Palestinian?
After nearly twenty minutes of discussion, the soldier said, in a mixture of broken Hebrew and English, with a fake smile: “I’ll let her pass this time. But tell her not to come again without her ID. This is the last time.”
I translated for the woman: “You can cross, take care of yourself and your children.”
We crossed the checkpoint. I looked back, and the soldier smiled at me and said “bye”.
I couldn’t interpret that smile. I hold a privilege that the mother doesn’t have. That privilege granted me a moment of passage, while she lives an entire life under the shadow of denial, fear, and waiting.
On the way back to the office, my head was drowning in thoughts.
Could I really endure this daily reality if I were in their place?
Could I smile in the face of oppression every time?
How do they live under these conditions, where checkpoints are not just places, but daily feelings of oppression, humiliation, and heartbreak?
Even though I’ve lived next to a military watchtower for years, I still haven’t gotten used to its presence.
I felt anger and sorrow, but this time I didn’t feel helpless.
I had done something. I used what I had, even if it wasn’t much.
But the question remains: when will we live a reality where we must no longer beg, nor be forced into endless waiting? When will we no longer need to use cunning and deadly kindness just to pass?
How many more checkpoints must every Palestinian cross just to feel human?
Read “Snapshots from the Occupation” by CPT Palestine.
