Beschreibung
The checkpoint doesn’t just play a role where it is located. It also has an impact beyond its location. It determines people’s lives, their actions and their thoughts. Asmi Bischara’s debut literary work “Checkpoint” illuminates this in almost sixty, mostly shorter chapters, which together form a comprehensive mosaic picture. It shows how the “Checkpoint State” (Israel) has set up an unsystematic system of checkpoints in “Checkpointland” (Gasa Strip and West Bank) through which the occupiers can better check the occupied people. The checkpoint system is omnipresent for both sides: “The checkpoint is in people’s hearts. He is in her eyes. The checkpoint connects and separates them.« Whether it’s the daily commute, whether it’s a wedding or a funeral, whether it’s a taxi system or media interest, whether it’s a political debate among Israeli leftists or a resigned attitude among Palestinians, everything is determined by the existence of countless checkpoints. The separation that these checkpoints create between the “checkpoint masters” and the “checkpoint passers-by,” or the contacts they allow, determines the relationship between the two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, to one another. A heavy mortgage.
Report from a divided country
Translated from Arabic and with an afterword by Hartmut Fähndrich
Hardcover, with dust jacket
ISBN 978-3-85787-377-5
Pages 234
Published September 2006
