For about 20 years the sister of prisoner Ammar az-Zain has been suffering humiliation and maltreatment whenever she travels through West Bank crossings and checkpoints in order to visit her brother.
Like all the Palestinian women who are exposed to the same treatment az-Zain complains about the great suffering she goes through when stopping at Israeli crossings on the way to visiting her brother Ammar in an Israeli jail in the 1948 occupied lands.
In remarks to the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) she said that the Israeli wanton measures at the crossings cause severe overcrowding and make Palestinian families wait for long hours in harsh conditions before they get entry permits or denied entry.
She described such measures as “abhorrent and humiliating” practices aimed at punishing the families of prisoners before allowing them to visit their relatives in jails.
She pointed to the exposure of women to humiliating and cruel searches at Israeli crossings especially when they are forced to enter physical scanning rooms.
In the same context Palestinian workers also suffer from ongoing humiliation as they travel to their workplaces such as factories and restaurants in Israeli areas through crossings like the Qalqilya crossing.
The arbitrary measures at the Qalqilya crossing prolong the travel of Palestinian workers to their workplaces where they spend 12 hours traveling to their workplaces and staying there before going back to their homes.
One of those workers told a PIC reporter that Palestinian men and women at the Qalqilya crossing in particular face systematic degrading treatment and are forced to take off their clothes for search.
“What is there is not suffering but tragedy. Many workers start to stay near the crossing at 11 or 12 o’clock at night so as they could enter earlier. Such situation means that those citizens are not able to see their wives and children” he said.
According to B’Tselem information center more than 30000 Palestinians have permits to work in Israel and may enter it by crossing any one of eleven checkpoints. Three checkpoints are located in the southern West Bank five in its center and three in the northern West Bank.
