ID cards issued by the Israeli government:
Blue ID card- 48 Palestinians (live inside the Green Line) aka "Arab Israelis" or Palestinian Israelis or Palestinians with Israeli citizenship; People with these IDs have Israeli IDs and Israeli Passports; they can travel inside 1948 borders of Israeli State.
Blue ID card- Jerusalem Palestinians (live in East Jerusalem); These people have Israeli IDs, but no Israeli nor Palestinian Passports, many have Jordanian Passports, but cannot live in Jordan; they can travel inside 1948 borders of Israeli State.
Green ID card- West Bank or Gaza Strip- Palestinian IDs and Passports; They can travel within West Bank or Gaza but not both (b/c they do not have permits to travel in between these pieces of land) and not within 1948 borders of Israeli State.
Orange ID card- West Bank or Gaza Strip- some elderly people given orange ideas before 1994; can travel within West Bank or Gaza but not both (b/c they do not have permits to travel in between these pieces of land) and not within 1948 borders of Israeli State.
No ID card- West Bank or Gaza Strip- 12,000 people were not given IDs or Passports (some were out of Palestine and returned in 1994) and now Israel is no longer giving IDs out (or at least not easily?); these people have a paper with a photo and a stamp and cannot easily travel anywhere (for some like the residents of Tel Rumeida where there is a check point on the street, that means even leaving the neighborhood is difficult)
License Plates issued by the Israeli government:
Green- Can travel only within the West Bank or Gaza strip not both (b/c they do not have the permits to drive between these two sections of land) and not within the 1948 borders of the Israeli State (Palestinians with
Green or Orange IDs)Yellow- Can travel in the 1948 borders of the Israeli State and within the West Bank and Gaza (only people with Israeli citizenship, blue ID cards or international citizenship (ie. US citizens can rent a car with yellow plates).
Check points and Roads:
This is Hawara check point. I took this photo while accompanying an almond farmer as he and his family members harvested the almonds. He has not been able to get regular permits from the Israeli government to harvest his lands and when he does, has been regularly attacked by local Settlers so he asked IWPS and ISM to accompany him in case that happened.At the Hawara check point 2 weeks prior to me being there, a teenage boy was shot and killed by a soldier. The soldier's excuse was that he saw a wire attached to the boy- it was the headphones from his walkman. The soldier saw a teenage boy's headphone wires and shot him dead. On the day I was accompanying the almond farmer, there were very long lines of people trying to get to and from work.
Also in this photo, you can see a road below the check point. This road is a Israeli-only road. Only Israelis with yellow plates (so in this case, it serves specifically Israeli Settlers living in the West Bank) can use these types of roads despite that they are within the West Bank and cut through Palestinian-owned agricultural land and are often the closest and sometimes the only paved roads that connect to Palestinian villages.
This is the Bethlehem check point where Palestinians are forced to wait on long lines and scan their hands into a machine that tracks their movement. The sign you see is meant to greet foreign tourists to Bethlehem (a historically important city for Christians in particular). The Bethlehem tourist industry is almost entirely controlled by Israeli companies, so Palestinians do not reap economic gains of these travelers. The Separation Barrier, The Apartheid Wall:
(Photos: 1- outside of Bethlehem; 2- in Bilin; 3- in East Jerusalem/Al Quds)By now, it is clear I think that this is an apartheid system. I won't say much about the Wall except here it is - illegal under international law - in some places it's 30 meters high made of concrete and in others it is multiple fences eating up large amounts of land, electrified with barbed wire. It destroys or prevents farmers from harvesting hundreds of thousands of olive trees; it prevents people from getting to their jobs or forcing them to sneak through, taking 5 hours for 30 minute commutes, risking being beaten, or jailed; it divides families who lived in one neighborhood now cut in half by the wall; the list of human rights abuses go on. Historically, every wall like this has eventually come down. And so will this.
Watch Towers:
are everywhere watching people constantly.
1- at the entrance of Haris, the village where I was staying
2- Somewhere on the road in the West Bank
3- at the border to Jerusalem / Al Quds (I think but don't remember 100%)
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