Police State
This morning was an incredibly frustrating and infuriating experience. I am still quite furious so I will probably not be able to be as objective as I normally would try to be.
I left my sister’s house this morning to go to the train station and take a train towards Beer Sheva. Getting there was already rather frustrating as finding a sherut was a drawn out process that took more than 30 minutes and I ended up at the station late for the train I had originally been planning to take.
Then when I tried to get into the train station, the person at the security checkpoint demanded to see my Identity Card. I told him that I do not have an identity card because I am not a resident, so he asked if I had a passport. I happened to have it on me because of the weekend trip near the border, so I took it out, but demanded he tell me why he was asking me for my passport. He refused to answer and I continued to ask and became more and more frustrated. He told me that if I wanted to go into the station that I better stop asking. Of course, I didn’t and we both become more aggressive, with him putting his hand in my face and demanding that I leave and me moving his hand away, cursing and trying to walk through into the station. He forcefully blocked my way and would not let me pass. At some point in this, he told me that if I didn’t like what I was doing I should call the police, so I had told him to do so but he refused. After this however, he said that he was considering calling the police and telling them that I had physically assaulted him in some way. Instead, another security guard came and when I told him what happened he reprimanded me saying that if someone does not carry their passport around at all times that he can not be allowed in to the station.
After this I left and took a sheruit to the Nataniya bus station and a bus to Tel Aviv and then to Beer Sheva, but was still enraged the entire time. Citizens must carry identity cards, but I’ve never heard of the need for tourist non residents to carry identification at all times when within a country. The worst part of the whole thing was that the whole process felt so arbitrary and lacking of any reason. If I had walked by a minute earlier or later or looked differently the whole thing probably would not have happened. It happened to be that something about my appearance or something else made a security guard want to question me and to see my identification. It felt so cruel and demeaning to see others walk by without any questions asked and to be stopped and not allowed to pass. I could not help but think about the dehumanizing process at the checkpoints with infinitely higher stakes. Holding a gun and having the ability to stop people at will is just in general too much power to give without setting proper guidelines and procedures. It seems to me that checking bags is one thing, and utterly permissible, but arbitrary questioning and stopping of people on a whim seems unjust. The big difference of course is that a Palestinian who does not cooperate could end up with a bullet in the head or in jail, while I could at worst be accused and maybe possibly temporarily detained.
I both love and loathe the part of my personality that seems to perpetually lead to these types of arguments. I get too riled up and passionate at the slightest feeling of injustice, this I know, but at the same time I feel that this is better than indifference. Above all, I can not stand feeling that feeling of arbitrariness. I want to know exactly what will happen if I do X but at the same time I think my level of emotion undermines the scientific and deterministic framework I hope to hold. I have the outlook on the world of a Newtonian scientist with the emotional outbursts and passionate view of life of the most degenerate child. It is a sad combination at times.
Yet, I looked into the set of the laws concerned the national identity card and who can ask for them and am technically in the right in this case.
Any resident sixteen years of age or older must at all times carry an Identity card, and present it upon demand to a senior police officer, head of Municipal or Regional Authority, or a policeman or member of the Armed forces on duty. Since I am not a resident I do not need an identity card, and as far as I know the security guards in place in front of the train stations do not seem to meet any of these demands. They are not exactly armed forces or policemen, but instead seemingly private or state owned security forces.
Of course, this fact is irrelevant, because in this country it so often feels like laws don’t matter. Since when did Israel become a police state?
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