QALANDIYA: Of all the vendors who have set up shop at Israel's Qalandiya checkpoint, Essam al-Abed does one of the briskest trades. Abed offers cigarettes to the roughly 15,000 Palestinians who cross daily
each way through the military checkpoint on the main road between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"I don't like the checkpoint. But I work here, for otherwise I would have no work," he said. "If there was something I could do, I would leave here and go work somewhere else." Abed, who sells 20 cartons a day, is one of a group of reluctant Palestinian vendors who eke out a living selling knick-knacks next to the concrete and wire roadblock.
It is part of a network of check points which Palestinians say strangles their economy. Israel calls it self-defence against Palestinian suicide bombers and other militants operating on territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war. "Even if they don't buy bread, they buy cigarettes," Abed said. "They buy because they are addicted. People get very agitated and they smoke cigarettes to calm their nerves."
Israel has said it will improve its roadblock system through training and new technology to speed security checks in order to ease friction with Palestinians, who say the strictures amount to collective punishment of their population.
The changes would focus on avoiding hold-ups of civilians or their goods without clear cause and on smoothing the passage of ambulances or anyone in need of medical care. Yet the checkpoints are also the sole source of livelihood for some Palestinians.
In a gravel clearing on the Ramallah side of the checkpoint, vendors hawk everything from electric fans to bubble gum to plush white teddy bears clutching bright red hearts. "Sunglasses for 10 shekels," one hawker yells from his spot on the opposite side of the checkpoint, near to where another was selling loaves of bread sprinkled with sesame seeds.
Although the checkpoint provides potential customers who sometimes stand in long queues waiting to cross, vendors say trade is not good. Business leaders say the Palestinian economy has shrivelled by 50 per cent in the past three years, leading to many business closures and a sharp rise in unemployment.
"When there was no checkpoint, it was better," said Youssef, a 28-year-old bookseller who came to hawk at Qalandiya after Israeli restrictions on movement cost him his job in Jerusalem. "The checkpoint may be beneficial to some - to 15 or 20 people - but it is horrible for everyone else."
BARELY SCRAPING BY": Most of the vendors say the income they earn from those passing through the checkpoint is barely enough to survive, even if cigarettes are a top seller. "It just buys bread," 16-year-old songbird vendor Mohanna Ayed said of his income as green and yellow birds worth 15 shekels ($3.30) each chirped in wire cages atop a rickety table.
Ayed, whose income helps support eight sisters and his sick father, said he has made an average of about 60 shekels a day since he set up shop a month ago. The Palestinian economy is weak, vendors say, and those passing through the checkpoint often do not want to buy.
"The people from Al Quds buy. Those in Ramallah are tired," said houseware vendor Ahmed Muhammed Said, saying his merchandize was cheaper than what could be bought in Al Quds. "All this is from Tel Aviv," he said, waving at a table full of coffee mugs bought from Israel that he sells for two shekels each. "We buy from them and then they shut us down." -Reuters
