Testimony - "One checkpoint, three lanes"
Name: | Anonymous |
Rank: | Sergeant |
Unit: | Kfir Brigade |
Location: | Tulkarem, West Bank |
Date: | 2008 |
An Israeli soldier provides a testimony to Breaking the Silence in which he describes dividing a checkpoint into lanes based on race or national identity. Israeli settlers would complain if they had to wait.
Soldier: There was one checkpoint that was divided into three lanes: there's a settlement, a checkpoint, and then Israeli territory. In the middle, there's a Palestinian village, so they just split the checkpoint into three lanes. Three lanes, and the brigade commander ordered that Jews should only wait at the checkpoint for 10 minutes. Because of that we had to have a special lane for them, and everyone else, the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, had to wait in the other two lanes. I remember that settlers would come, go around the Arabs, and just did it naturally. I went over to a settler and said: 'Why are you going around? There's a line here, sir.’ He said: 'You really think I'm going to wait behind an Arab?’ He began to raise his voice at me. 'You're going to hear from your brigade commander’.