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ffirouzeh:

Kalandia Checkpoint. The First New Gate To Jerusalem in 466 Years.

The Kalandia Checkpoint is an opening in what Israel calls “The Security Fence” and what Palestinians call “The Apartheid Wall”. Regardless of what you call the separation infrastructure, the checkpoint acts a modern gate to the city of Jerusalem.

After experiencing Kalendia first hand, I came away realizing that until I personally walked through the checkpoint, I was ignorant of the mechanism and tactics employed to humiliate and dehumanize everyone who passes through it. Which means I was not fully capable of participating in the Israeli-Palestinian discourse.
I travelled to Israel in June 2010 with 11 classmates as part of my graduate studies in architecture at SCI-Arc. Our architecture studio was set up like a thesis, we were asked by our gifted teacher Eric Kahn to develop our own projects and he encouraged us to find one with “an uncanny truth”. The only requirement was that it be in Jerusalem.
Because we were working in an ancient city, on sacred land, entrenched in history and biblical reference, I felt a need to comprehend the city beyond the traditional tools that architects use, and developed my own methodology to understand Jerusalem’s urban condition.

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“Humiliation” is a good adjective. Standing between those bars and watching the frustration on people’s faces as guards jam the turnstiles shut between each person is something you really have to see.

The waiting, the delays, the tight spaces, the bars, the spaces designed to close you into a cage as you wait to get screened, the occasional humming over the intercom - its all done with purpose.

Its also something some people have to go through twice a day.