Even When You Look Away, It Happens Anyway: Bearing Witness in Qalandiya

The Israeli military checkpoint at Qalandiya. (Photo: Tamar Fleishman, The Palestine Chronicle)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

I covered my face, as if that simple gesture might somehow make it all vanish. It was as if, by refusing to look, I could stop it from existing—not just in my mind, but in the world.

The volleys beat again, and again, and again—until the air shook, until the hearts of everyone around us trembled.

“The army has invaded the camp,” said an acquaintance, standing at the junction, warning people not to go home.

At another junction, I stood with a group of young men, all of us glued to our cell phones, watching the invasion unfold in real time, filmed from a rooftop inside Qalandiya Refugee Camp.

Gunfire rang out on the screen and in the streets around us. The sounds were indistinguishable.

We stood there, silent, frozen, horrified by the horror taking place just meters away.

I kept watching, my inner pulse syncing with the relentless rhythm of the shooting.

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No one knew why this was happening. No explanation, no warning—only murmurs: “It’s like Jenin… like Tulkarm.”

And then, on the screen, a young man collapsed, shot in the middle of the road. I couldn’t look away.

But when an Israeli soldier rushed to his body and began kicking him—again and again—I turned away.

I covered my face, as if that simple gesture might somehow make it all vanish. It was as if, by refusing to look, I could stop it from existing—not just in my mind, but in the world.

As if the sheer force of my will could make the brutality and injustice disappear.

We still don’t know what happened to that young man. Whether he survived or not.

Time will tell.

What else happened in Qalandiya that day? A different kind of violence—quieter, but no less cruel.

A woman was transferred from one stretcher to another, from one ambulance crew to the next, on her way to East Jerusalem.

No shielding, no privacy, no concern for her dignity.

The entire procedure—what the army calls “back-to-back”—was visible to everyone, filmed from behind metal bars.

Even after all these years, after so many such “cases,” it was still unbearable to witness.

Still shameful.

(Translated by Tal Haran)

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