Checkpoint “misery” exaggerated by the AP

Meryl Yourish
Yourish.com
21 February '10

This get-out-your-hankie story is the latest profile by the AP of the horrors the Palestinians have to go through—all, of course, caused by Israel. This one is an AP correspondent who spent a week (five days, actually) going through the Qalandia crossing into Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been the site of several terrorist attacks in recent years, and terror attack attempts are up sharply recently.

But here, I think, are the most relevant facts in the entire article. The reporter followed five different Palestinians on five different days. He starts with this woe-is-them description of how long the crossing takes:

Until a decade ago, his commute from his West Bank village 20 kilometers (12 miles) north would have taken less than hour. But after the Palestinian uprising broke out in 2000, border checkpoints started going up. The Qalandia crossing grew steadily more arduous, and now Abu Jalil has to get up at 4:30 a.m.

So his commute was less than an hour. The reporter doesn’t say how much less, but he does let us know how much time was added to the commute:

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