Portfolio Category - LCEA 2013

Deadlock The free movement of people and goods is elementary to everyday life – it’s essential if you want to go to work, attend school, visit family, have a day out, rush to the hospital or attend funerals. But journeys within the West Bank are long and tiresome. Barriers, roadblocks, flying and permanent checkpoints and the separation barrier impede almost every journey within the West Bank. Every trip is held up by the IDF in one way or another making it impossible to be anywhere in time. The experience is dehumanising as people are ushered through the checkpoints like cattle. All the while Israel doesn’t regard freedom of movement as a human right but a privilege that it may grant or deny as it sees fit – this contradicts International Law and is tantamount to collective punishment.