What's your goal in being present at the checkpoints? | Just Vision تجاوز إلى المحتوى الرئيسي

What's your goal in being present at the checkpoints?

Leah Shakdiel 9

What's your goal in being present at the checkpoints?

To make sure that there is a watching eye. I think that it is very important that the military in any democracy be supervised by civil society. It's the role of politicians up above, but the daily occurrences, the praxis, cannot be done by politicians, it's a matter for civilians, for regular people just volunteering their time. We don't do it enough. Often we meet Palestinians who tell us, "An hour ago, this and that happened", "Where were you yesterday?" We try to tell them that we are volunteers and we simply cannot cover twenty-four hours a day at every single checkpoint. We do what we can do. Many of us are women who have already retired from their jobs, but many of us, like myself, work— I take time off whenever I can. I think it is also tremendously important for the soldiers to see that there is a civil society that they're doing this for and that civil society knows and cares. It's important for people to come and see what it's like. It's also very important for Palestinians to see that there are Israeli Jews who care.