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Checkpoint [Israeli Occupation of Palestine] (2003)

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Checkpoint (original title: Machssomim) is a 2003 documentary film by Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, showing the everyday interaction between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians at several of the regions Israel Defense Forces checkpoints. The film won five awards at various film festivals, including Best International Documentary at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, best feature-length documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the Golden Gate Award for Documentary Feature at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Although the film was generally well received, it was also controversial and reactions from audience members and critics were sometimes very angry.

This film provides a fly on the wall account of various checkpoints on the Palestine-Israel border. Miles from anywhere, people travel frequently, walking long distances, to go to hospitals or to work. The Israeli guards like to 'show them' and routinely harass them by making them stand in the blazing sun, driving rain, or deep snow for many hours (eg up to ten hours) before returning their papers and often sending them home. They are polite, but admit to the cameras that this is how they deal with people - force them to stand in the rain. It could almost be a laid back Palestinian expose of what is happening at the checkpoints except - and here is the double-whammy - it is made by an Israeli, with Israeli funding - and it has not only been snapped up and promoted by the Israelis in cinemas but also by the Palestinians. What is perhaps even more shocking is that it is now being used by the Israeli forces as training material for their guards. The filmmaker has certainly got his message across to a wide audience!

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More info:
Checkpoints

“The right to freedom of movement provides that people are entitled to move freely within the borders of the state, to leave any country and to return to their country.”

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
December 10th, 1948

Movement Restrictions: The Facts

- By September 2008 there were 699 closure obstacles in the West Bank– approximately 130 of these have been added after the Annapolis Conference began in November 2007.
- 630 of the obstacles have been identified: trenches (3%), partial checkpoints (3%), earth walls (7%), road-blocks (11%), road barriers (12%), checkpoints (12%), road gates (16%) and earth mounds (36%).
- 74 % of the main routes in the West Bank are controlled by checkpoints or blocked entirely.
- In the period from April to September 2008 the weekly average of flying (or random) checkpoints was 89. Due to their unpredictable nature and more intensive search procedures, the flying checkpoints are usually even more problematic for the Palestinians than the regular ones.
Movement Restrictions

Over the last forty one years of the military occupation of Palestinian land, Israel has implemented a policy of movement restrictions including checkpoints, earth mounds, trenches, gates, roadblocks, bypass roads, the Wall, and a complex system of permits.

From 1967 to 1991, restrictions on the movement of Palestinians were relatively light. However, with the beginning of the first Intifada in 1987, Israel increasingly restricted Palestinians’ freedom of movement by implementing a permit system; and in 1988, Israel began preventing Palestinians from traveling between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. With the start of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Israeli Military imple-mented further restrictions on the permit system. Every Palestinian was required to obtain an individual permit, instead of general permits that applied to the population as a whole. In 1993, Israeli military check-points were established along the 1949 Armistice Line between the West Bank and Israel; between the West Bank and East Jerusalem; and between cities within the West Bank.

From the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, the Israeli Military increasingly restricted Palestinians from moving freely. In 2001 it became illegal for Israeli citizens to travel into Area A (areas under full Palestinian control) in the West Bank. From 2002 to the present, closure policies have substantially tightened and the entry of Palestinian workers into Israel has drasti-cally decreased.