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Portraits From The Edge Of The World - Checkpoint (2007)

We enter Ramallah via Jerusalem, the holy city of sacred narrow streets through which more blood than rain has flowed for thousands of years now. A labyrinth of wrath and faith.We have crossed the main checkpoint into Ramallah without a hitch, not even having to show our passports. Because our Arab taxi driver is of Israeli nationality and that is the magic pass: Palestine is his.On the other side, however, a long line of cars wait their turn with stoic uncertainty. Some will eventually cross the Calandia border while others will have to turn back.So we have crossed into Palestine without delay, not realising we were entering the biggest jail in the world: an open air prison covering some 1,200 square kilometres. All of Palestine is strangled by this wall which has fractured the territory into four parts: the Southern West Bank, the Northern West Bank, Jericho and Gaza, two islands floating in a sea of barbed wire, and the Holy City itself, Jerusalem, off limits to an overwhelming majority of Palestinians although it is part of their destiny.In spite of everything, on the sides of the roads, next to the concrete blocks and the electrified fences, the delicate flowers of the almond trees form the fragile metaphor of a Palestinian spring which never seems to arrive.