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Palestinians are forced
to show their identity cards at checkpoints. Soldiers usually curse,
beat, insult and
humiliate Palestinians, whether they are men, women, or children,
just
because they are
Palestinians.
An Israeli woman soldier
wrote a letter to the Hebrew language newspaper Ha’aretz and
described the inhuman
practices against Palestinians at checkpoints. Amnon Rebenstein,
an Israeli journalist,
wrote an article in the same paper of September 8, 1981, in which he
stated:
The abasement of Arabs
in the territories has turned into a routine. It is up to the
Defense
Minister to fulfill his
promise and put an end to it. Last Friday the letter of Oran Rinat
was
published in Ha’aretz,
and it is suitable to express an opinion on it. The writer served in
the
Army as a soldier in the
Women’s Civil Defense Corps., and she testifies to the treatment
by the men in the border
guards, and the men and women soldiers in civil defense, of
Arabs from the occupied
territories in a single, small encounter- at roadblocks intended to
serve a security purpose
solely. In the eyes of those responsible for the roadblocks, the
Arabs are not considered
people, “but some type of inferior creatures, devoid of real rights
so that you are allowed
to behave with them according to whim, and there is no court and
no judge.”
She relates the daily
humiliation: curses and abuses; Arab businessmen forced to stand for
five and more hours in
the sun as punishment for having a dirty I.D.; soldiers screaming in
hysteria at adult Arabs
and commanding them to “shut their mouths.” She speaks about the
answer of the abased:
they fear to answer, because if they open their mouths, it will
serve
as a pretext for shouts
and sometimes even for blows.
The things about which
Orna Rinat wrote, just like the things which Attalah Mansour heard
on his visit to the West
Bank that he reported two weeks ago, are not new for someone
who follows what goes on
regarding the behavior of the authorities toward the Arabs of the
territories. Even the
answer is known: “Hatred is rising, inverted, waiting to burst.”
These improprieties are
not directed against terrorists and collaborators who should be
dealt with forcefully,
of course; they are directed against Arabs because they are Arabs.
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