Why?

Why a checkpoint?
Why any checkpoint?
Why a checkpoint to Jerusalem from the north?

1. It is part of the machinery of the illegal Israeli occupation and helps make it work.
2. It is an inhumane system, a means of humiliation and harassment, which is used to control an occupied peoples, the Palestinians.
3. It promotes among the Israelis a false sense of security and protection of an invisible illegal
border and a culture of fear for the Israelis, those who occupy.
4. It helps control the economy of Palestinians, the oppressed - transit of laborers, goods and
Palestinian farm products that could feed Jerusalem.
5. It gives young Israeli soldiers the power of the "we," in control of the "they," which is considered honorable and a dedication to country. Young people learn to be insensitive.

Lines of Palestinian people fenced in, caged in on both sides. One can only move forward when the line moves. It could be five minutes or an hour or more.

Palestinian children wait here with their parents.
Then they pass through a tall turnstile, that allows one person at a time, unless two can sneak in. But if the Israeli soldier sees she yells and yells and yells.
A small boy gets on the other side of the turnstile without his mother
and cries and cries. The Israeli soldiers do not "hear" his cry.

This fencing separates people on the inside from the people on the outside.

The illegal apartheid wall around Jerusalem keeps "us" in and "them" out.
At what cost to humanity?

The exit of the illegal Israeli checkpoint.
Crossing over by foot with no checkpoint takes less than a minute.
Going through the checkpoint can take 20 minutes, one hour, two hours.

Why a checkpoint?