Israel's checkpoints & borders expose its apartheid regime

Apartheid is increasingly used to describe how Israel treats Palestinians, yet its global defenders continuously claim that the state of Israel ensures equality for all. The charge of apartheid is often dismissed as they point to the continued existence of a thriving cadre of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are represented in various professions, including medicine and pharmacy. This, they claim, shows the absence of racial discrimination.

The fact is that Israel has passed laws that discriminate between Arabs and Jews in Israel. Adalah, the legal centre for the Arab minority in Israel, has documented more than fifty racist and discriminatory laws that favour Jews over Arabs in all aspects of life.

Most of these laws are cloaked in a veneer that may appear to justify applying the law to different groups, for example, those who served in the Israeli army and were members of Jewish military units before the establishment of the state of Israel or are members of Jewish religious institutions. Some settlers are also described as Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, this qualifying as belonging to a “different group”.

Restricting Palestinian movement

Of course, the greatest discrimination is that faced by the Palestinian people under occupation, who are denied any political rights and subjected to restrictions on the most basic freedoms, especially regarding movement within the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel.

Israel’s discrimination is all too visible when you examine its roads, the behaviour of security at certain checkpoints versus others, and the regulations and treatments at border crossings. Travel on checkpoints used by many settlers, such as the Hizma checkpoint east of Jerusalem and the tunnel checkpoint for travellers in the south of the West Bank near Beit Jala, is usually fast, with few cars stopped. However, at nearby checkpoints used only by Palestinians, such as Qalandia and Rachel’s Tomb, every single car and traveller is stopped, IDs checked, and luggage trunks opened, causing at times hours-long delays.

A number of assessments were made by activists testing the results of travel at exactly the same time from the same location, but via different routes. Those using routes most travelled by settlers make the trip in half the time or more than those who use checkpoints that have no settlers crossing.

Travel between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is totally forbidden, as is travel by Palestinian cars between the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.

Since 7 October 2023, Israel has heavily restricted entry and exit through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, while the Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing that connects Gaza with Israel has remained practically closed. Even after the reopening of the Rafah crossing as part of Trump's 20-point plan and the start of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement approved by the UN Security Council, things barely improved.

Crossing the Rafah is decided unilaterally by Israel’s right-wing government, whose policies and practices are defined by ethnic cleansing.

Israel has arbitrarily decided that the opening of the crossing is strictly for sick Gazans, on the condition that the number of those who exit must exceed the number of Palestinians allowed to return, with no more than 50 allowed to cross daily. Recently, Israel refused entry to 38 of the 50 Palestinians who applied to return under the quota, reinforcing the notion that there are attempts to depopulate the Gaza Strip.

Documented discrimination

While all these cases of discrimination are only noticeable if one zooms in to investigate them, it also requires a neutral observer to compare Israeli checkpoints on routes heavily used by settlers versus those used by non-settler routes. There is no written or visual proof of discrimination if Israelis and most tourists don’t know what happens at the Israeli checkpoints on non-settler roads (i.e., Palestinian-used roads).

Palestinians from all cities except East Jerusalem are not allowed to use the easy-to-use, rarely checked checkpoints.

However, every now and then, a document comes up that inadvertently shows the discrimination in black and white. Recently, a document was issued by the Israeli Airports Authority, which regulates all international border crossings—air, sea, and land. Around the world, international crossings are usually open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, in Palestine/Israel, the story is much more complicated.

The days and hours revealed in this public document show a layered form of discrimination. Borders used by Israeli Jews are open for longer hours (the difference is influenced by the neighbouring country and the purpose of travel), then come border crossings used by Palestinian citizens of Israel; this is followed by the border crossing used by Palestinians from the West Bank, and the worst is the border crossing used by Palestinians in Gaza.

In the run-up to the Easter/Passover holidays, the spokesperson for the Israeli Airports Authority published the operating hours of the various crossings under Israeli control. While the publication of these hours in Arabic and Hebrew may be intended to inform the public, a closer examination of the schedules reveals the extent of the discriminatory policy. The crossings are open for extended hours for a small number of Israeli Jews wishing to vacation on the beaches of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula or visit Petra in Jordan, while the operating hours at the crossings most frequently used by Arab citizens of Israel and residents of the West Bank (including Jerusalem) are shorter.

There’s more. The Begin Crossing, which connects Israel to Egypt via the Egyptian resort of Taba, is open 24 hours a day, as are all airports in Israel and worldwide. The Rabin Crossing, which provides Israelis with access to Aqaba and Petra, is open daily until 8 PM. These two crossings are largely used by Jewish Israelis from across the country, but mostly from the centre and south of Israel.

However, the Sheikh Hussein Crossing, used by thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel, largely from Haifa and the Galilee, is closed on Saturdays and open until 4 PM on Fridays. Thousands of Palestinians use this crossing during religious holidays, and it has been reported that Israel has prohibited travellers from using their cars during these periods, citing congestion.

Nizar, a Palestinian citizen of Israel from Nazareth, said it took him nine hours—leaving his home at 8 AM and arriving in Amman, Jordan at 5 PM, a trip that normally takes 3–4 hours. The heavy load was due to the holidays, the closure of the crossing on Saturdays, and further reduced hours on Sundays through Thursdays, with even shorter hours on Fridays.

The King Hussein Bridge, formerly the Allenby Bridge, has the worst operating hours of any crossing under Israeli control, even though it handles the highest volume of travellers year-round, especially in the summer and on holidays. King Hussein is also closed on Saturdays and has even shorter hours the rest of the week than any other crossing.

Residents of free countries typically only experience the hardship of commuting during traffic jams, but the Palestinian people’s mobility struggles are exacerbated by deliberate and persistent policies designed to humiliate them and force them to emigrate.

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to freedom of movement as a fundamental right, stipulating the individual's freedom "to move and reside within the borders of each state, and the right to leave and return to any country." However, the occupying power not only violates this right but also the fundamental principle of the Declaration itself.

Article 2 explicitly guarantees that everyone is entitled to "all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, or birth." This principle guarantees the universality of rights, and states are legally obligated to prohibit all forms of discrimination. A question that must then be asked: if Israel declares that hours of operation are discriminatory based on racial grounds, where do UN member states stand regarding their obligations to prohibit all forms of discrimination?

Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and the author of the new book State of Palestine NOW.

Follow Daoud on X: @daoudkuttab

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.