Do not let the crossing of dignity turn into the crossing of insult

Written by: Attorney Ziyad Abu Ziyad

I do not know who is unlucky enough to suggest naming the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge the Bridge of Dignity, because this bridge has become a symbol and a witness to the humiliation and suffering that our people are exposed to while passing through it.

Today everyone is clamoring and protesting, while the Palestinian and Jordanian official authorities are talking about solutions that I see as "cosmetic" that do not fatten and do not satisfy hunger, while a voice comes from the far north of Africa, from the Maghreb talking about "Moroccan mediation" to persuade Israel to extend working hours on the bridge and make them round the clock. the hour.

The truth is that the suffocating crisis at the "Insult" crossing cannot be solved by prior electronic registration, nor by closing the bridge for ten days, during which travelers are "dispersed", so that the crisis returns to be more violent and more complex than it was, but the solution is to search for the roots of this problem and address it.

In order to go back to the use of the name “the crossing of dignity”, we have to restore to the citizen traveling through it his sense of human dignity and also his feeling that he is not a milking cow that everyone wants to milk even if its milk turns into bleeding blood.

In order to reach a radical solution to the problem of the crossings, I propose, as soon as possible, the formation of a joint committee of Palestinian citizens to be popularly chosen, and of Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli officials, and the participation of the United Nations to draw up a binding action plan for all that puts an end to the constant suffering and humiliation to which our people traveling through the bridges are subjected. .

It must be emphasized first that if there is a sincere intention to deal with this problem and solve it, then the basic change required is to change the concept of the crossing and the way in which it is managed.

First, I am not exaggerating if I say that the suffering on the bridges has gradually increased since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, instead of fading away.
Before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, two bridges were operating from the beginning of the occupation until the early 1990s. There was a Damieh bridge dedicated to the north of the West Bank, and King Hussein (Allenby) bridge designated to the south of the West Bank and Gaza. However, the occupation authorities closed Damia Bridge and restricted entry and exit to King Hussein Bridge. Now, in light of the suffocating crisis we are facing, what is required as an immediate measure is to rehabilitate and activate the Damieh Bridge so that it will be for the residents of the northern West Bank. And if this is done, then half of the problem will find its way to a solution.

Second: The problem did not exist before going out on people with the VIP heresy, but the existence of this service worked to turn the traveling citizen into a target for exploitation, so that one sometimes feels as if there is a fabrication of the problem of crowding in the rest area so that people are forced to use this service.

Unfortunately, this service is official exploitation disguised as unofficial clothes, with the aim of achieving outrageous wealth by exploiting people's needs. These days, for example, the daily income of this service reaches about a hundred thousand dollars or more, and to the same extent that I blame the people in charge of this service, I blame the people because if they were at a sufficient level of awareness, they would boycott this service, rejecting the exploitation to which they are exposed. Recently, before Eid, we saw that the VIP service collected 110 US dollars from each passenger and then put the passengers on buses to travel the same as those who traveled without this service.

And not only that, I learned that many travelers resorted to giving bribes to some workers in this service to enable them to travel before others. This was possible due to the absence of numbers for passengers on a screen that everyone can see, and adherence to these numbers.

The time has come to cancel this service and make way for everyone to travel on an equal footing.

And I am certain that if a radical reform of travel procedures on bridges takes place, everyone will find that there was no reason or justification for the existence of this service.

To that end, I propose the following:

1. Since the second Intifada and the closure of the bridge in the face of the Palestinian liaison, and the prevention of the police and the Palestinian liaison men from being inside the bridge, the Palestinian Authority was forced to introduce registration procedures for passengers, whether departing or arriving. These procedures double the time spent by the traveler. Therefore, the return of the Palestinian connection to the terminal of the bridge and enabling the Palestinian side to access the restrictions of arrivals and departures leads to the cancellation of registration in the rest area, whether at exit or return, which saves the traveler about an hour of time that he needs. International pressure must be put on Israel to return to this measure, which is part of the crossings and borders agreement, which Israel committed to and then reneged on and denied.

2. Add to that the issue of buses. The use of large buses forces passengers to wait for a longer time inside the bus because there is no fixed schedule and for short periods, forcing the buses to travel even if they do not have a sufficient number of passengers.

3. If some say that this matter exists now, but at a slow pace, then the response to it is that the waiting period for passengers for buses or waiting while they are inside must be shortened. This is not possible unless the companies working to transport passengers across the bridges are commissioned using minibuses, each of which does not exceed 12 passengers.

4. Reviewing the bureaucratic procedures related to the transportation of passengers and their luggage and shortening all the routine procedures that have no benefit other than suggesting to the traveler: We are here.

5. With all this and in addition to it, it is necessary to stop at the financial burdens that are placed on the shoulders of travelers, which increase the heinous financial exploitation of them. The traveler from any airport, including from the Israeli airports, does not pay any fees, while the Palestinian traveler is obligated to pay a permit fee of approximately fifty dollars for each person, including children, and there is discrimination in payment between Palestinian ID holders and their Jerusalemite Palestinian brothers who hold a blue card. Israeli. In addition to paying on the Palestinian/Israeli side, every Palestinian is obligated to pay ten dinars on the Jordanian side!! The time has come to stop this exploitation on both sides, west of the river and east of the river, by all parties.

Finally, I do not exaggerate if I say that the problem of travel on the bridges is fabricated and that if the bridge was dealt with as a crossing open 24 hours a day, and the Damieh Bridge was opened for the people of the northern West Bank, and minibuses were used to transport passengers, and a schedule for buses was set, and humane treatment on the bridges was improved. First and foremost, the VIP service has been cancelled. If all these measures are taken with the cessation of material exploitation of passengers and the abolition of fees, then we will breathe a sigh of relief and perhaps we will go back to calling the crossing the Al-Karama crossing.