Checkpoint “misery” exaggerated by the AP

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:

[…] It has taken him 22 minutes to get through.

In fact, here are the five summations of how long the crossing takes to get through for the five Palestinians the reporter traveled with:

(Sunday) It has taken him 22 minutes to get through.
(Monday) Today, his crossing takes the same as Abu Jalil’s – 22 minutes.
(Tuesday) Time crossing: 54 minutes.
(Wednesday) Time crossing: 33 minutes.
(Thursday) Time crossing: 25 minutes.

The evidence does not support the reporter’s contention that the checkpoints are daily humiliation and misery, taking hours and hours out of Palestinians’ lives while they wait to go through to Jerusalem.

The story includes slaps at soldiers for sleeping on the job (those are deserved), being rude to the Palestinians (oh, the horrors! They belched over the loudspeakers), being bored and unconcerned, and not saying anything to the Palestinians. Yeah, they really know how to humiliate people waiting in line. (Say, AP, how about an article about how our TSA workers daily humiliate Americans of every shape and size? There’d be material there for a whole series!)

The AP merely brushes past the real reason for the checkpoints. Witness:

“People forget that the crossing is there for a reason and not because Israel decided, ‘Let’s make Palestinians wait in line,'” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev says. He says the barrier and crossing were built after “a wave of very murderous suicide bombings that killed all too many innocent civilians.”

At the height of fighting in early 2002, suicide bombings were a near-daily occurrence in Israel, often in Jerusalem. There have been no bombings for two years, proving the crossings work, Regev says.

Here’s a list of those near-daily occurrences that killed hundreds and wounded thousands until the separation fence and Operation Defensive Shield. There were 242 deaths in 55 terror attacks in 2002. Publishing the numbers would legitimize the fence, though, so of course, the AP presents only one side of the story.

Last week we got a hagiography of a Hamas murderer. This week, we get a complaint about a device that was built to stop the machinations of people like the dead Hamas murderer. Don’t count on ever getting a story that follows up on the lives of Israelis affected by the suicide bombings. But you can pretty much count on the AP to whitewash the Palestinians and tar the Israelis.

Hey, at least they didn’t try to slip back in the phrase “traditionally Arab” in front of “east Jerusalem.”