Written photographs- Bus 21

There are times when I am unable to take pictures of some situations. Sometimes this is the case  because doing so could aggravate the situation, and put Palestinians or myself or others in danger. At other times, a photo would be unwanted by the people I would have been photographing. I will describe these situations in words, but not include pictures.

Bus 21 is an Arab bus that drives from Jerusalem to cities across the West Bank, including Ramallah and Bethlehem. My wife and I today took a serveece (think of a group taxi) from Hebron to Bethlehem, and a bus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, where we got off at the Damascus Gate.

As our bus was close to entering the city, it stopped at a checkpoint. It was time to check passports and IDs. Is is during this time that I saw one of the most clear examples of Israeli discrimination against Palestinians.
While we Westerners were allowed to remain on the bus, all the Palestinians- men, women and children- had to get up and file out. They stood in the sun as their IDs were checked, while we were allowed to remain in the comfortably air conditioned vehicle. A plainclothes Israeli male security guard, and a short woman soldier, came into the bus. After looking at our passports, they noticed a Palestinian woman who did not exit the bus along with the others. In English, the woman soldier asked her why did not get off the bus. She replied that her leg is broken.
The response: "I don't care".
"But my leg is broken. I can't walk". She lifted up her skirt to show her cast.
"I don't care".

Eventually, the woman soldier relented. She flipped through the Palestinian woman's papers, and wordlessly walked off.

Perhaps she noticed that us tourist foreigners were staring at her, and she felt it could be bad PR for her employers. Perhaps she felt some sympathy for the woman after all, even if she showed nothing but disdain and lack of empathy throughout. Perhaps break was coming up soon, and she didn't want to waste anymore of her time.

After a few minutes went by, the Palestinians filed back into the bus, and we drove on.


There are some who describe Israel's policies towards the Palestinian people as apartheid. Having seen what I had just seen on Bus 21, it'd be hard for me to disagree with such an analogy,