TO READ ONLINE: bit.ly/zKrNBy
Little Girl Behind a Big Wall
A Testing Ground
Posted on January 2, 2012
I grumble as I wait in the line of cars at the checkpoint. At least, there are only a few cars in front of me and the soldiers are moving quickly. As I approach the checkpoint, I roll down my window and flash my passport.
In Hebrew, I am told to go straight and up the hill- not the usual left to exit the checkpoint. It is amazing what can all be communicated with a single point of a finger and a grunt. It seems that the mere presence of an M16 can help in understanding foreign languages.
As I drive to the designated area, there are soldiers pointing myself and 5 other cars (all Palestinian) towards selected parking spots. Every spot has an apparatus next to it, which looks like a giant IV that you would find in a hospital. I am told to get out of my vehicle with all my windows shut, except the driver window, which should be 5 cm open.
I get out of my vehicle and stand next to the Palestinians who have also had to abandon their cars. Soldiers wander around the cars, one with a stopwatch. It is obviously a drill of some kind. With complete disregard for our schedules or impending meetings, the soldiers are taking the opportunity to practice and test Practice on a population without any kind of consent, but that does not seem to matter. Consent is never asked or required from a people under occupation. They are the occupied and at the whims of their occupiers.
From the IV apparatus next to our parked cars, soldiers put a hose into our driver side window. It reminds of movies where the someone tries to commit suicide by filling their car with exhaust. Some of the people ask the soldiers what they are doing. Their response is, that it is for security and that it is fine. There is no comment as to what or why they are spraying some sort of chemical into our vehicles.
After 10 minutes the soldier with the stopwatch stops his clock. The hoses are removed from our cars and we are allowed to continue onwards to Jerusalem. We are permitted to go on with our day. We are permitted to go on living.
Yet the smell from the gas still lingering in my car is assaulting. Even though it is cold outside, I drive with my windows down. Unfortunately nothing will stop my impending headache. For the next four days, whenever I drive my car I have a headache. Yet, my whining and complaints are futile.
An occupied population is a crucial experimental ground for the occupier. Israel views the Palestinian people as a dispensable people- a testing ground for ‘security’ apparatuses and weapons that are later exported globally. Tear gas technology, stink spray, rubber bullets, and gassing cars are all tested here before they are exported. If too many Palestinians end up dying from the gas, or there is an international outcry, it won’t be exported, if it found ‘effective’ it will be sold worldwide and used by governments on their own people, such as at G20 protests.
While, western governments buy these security apparatuses and support a government that does testing on human beings we are not surprised when cancer becomes more prominent to people under occupation. We are not surprised when children in Gaza are increasingly born with birth defects. In the mean time, my head hurts from the smell gas but I am already half an hour late for my meeting, so there is
no time to complain.
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