How one Gaza crossing went from death trap to gate of hope
A decade ago, crossing from Gaza at the Erez checkpoint was a nightmare, but now under Defense Ministry management the once-dangerous crossing offers a model of order and security for West Bank facilities.
Tens of thousands of Gaza Strip residents, Palestinians who used to work in Israel, bear scars from the Erez crossing. They used to call it the “barrier of death” because the passage to Israel through the crowded crossing was life threatening. Hundreds required medical treatment after suffocating there or being trampled in the cruel battle for survival at the antiquated, congested security checkpoints. Injuries were par for the course. There isn’t a single Palestinian laborer who traveled from Gaza to work in Israel who has not experienced the travails of this crossing, with its notorious and nightmarish carousels – revolving steel barriers through which they passed to the Israeli side.
More than 10 years ago, I arrived at the Erez crossing with a camera crew. The footage shot that night deeply shocked television viewers and decision-makers in Israel. The film crew and I barely escaped being trampled by the thousands of Palestinians who stormed the revolving turnstiles, rushing not to miss a day of work. We climbed onto the roof of the revolving barrier and the masses charged forward below us. The Israeli soldiers stationed at the facility controlled the barrier by pressing a button, every so often allowing small groups of laborers to push through the narrow passages leading to the turnstiles. Anyone not fast enough to slither through to the other side risked being trapped against the iron rails along the sides of the passageway. Two Palestinians laborers were crushed to death in this manner in 2004. Being stomped on, injured and humiliated was a daily routine for tens of thousands of Gaza residents for whom working in Israel was the only way to make a living.
Similarly horrifying spectacles reminiscent of the terrible years at the Erez crossing occur daily at the other crossings between Israel and the West Bank, including the one north of Bethlehem, known as the 300 Checkpoint, and the one at Qalandiya near Ramallah. The humiliation and horrendous conditions that the West Bank Palestinians endure at the crossings even riled Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel of the right-wing HaBayit Hayehudi. Ariel said April 15, “The State of Israel and its defense agencies should be ashamed of this disgrace: People standing there under inhumane conditions in the heavy summer heat and the winter rains.”
The West Bank roadblocks are run by the Israel Defense Forces and the police, but the Erez crossing was handed over in 2006 to the Ministry of Defense, which reopened it with a new terminal in 2007. Palestinians now call it “the good crossing.”
