Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumFacebook group shares checkpoint wait in real time
4/21/2015
Palestinian women present their identity cards to an Israeli border police officer as they wait to make their way to Jerusalem at the Qalandia checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah, July 4, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman)
The first thing that Tanya George does when she wakes up in her Ramallah home is to check the Facebook group Status of the Road, Qalandia and Hizma. She scrolls to the latest entry checks and reads the status of Palestines worst checkpoint. If it is crowded, she would take the longer road to her job in East Jerusalem, where she works to support underprivileged students, rather than risk waiting in line for hours, or might decide to do some work at home and leave for the office later.
For most Palestinians, the Qalandia checkpoint is the nearest crossing point from downtown Ramallah to downtown East Jerusalem. Individuals working for international organizations can use a special checkpoint north of al-Bireh, referred to as the DCO checkpoint. A third option is the Hizma checkpoint. The last two are farther away than Qalandia, but faster to get through if Qalandia is backed up. Qalandia also connects Ramallah to Bethlehem via the alternative Wadi al-Nar Road.
The Facebook group monitoring the crossings was started by Richard Khoury, a Palestinian who works for the International Committee of the Red Cross. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Khoury explained how the group was established. My wife and I live in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, and on weekends we normally go to Ramallah to see family and friends. Khoury said that after wasting so many hours waiting in line, he and his colleagues at work began exchanging information on traffic backups through Facebook.
Within weeks, in January 2012, the Facebook group had a few hundred members. Its numbers quickly grew as people saw the importance and the usefulness of the group. Today, it's reached nearly 32,000 members. But with success came problems, and users began attempting to use the group for political or even financial gain. Some wanted to publish articles or political statements; others wanted to promote businesses or commercial services. We had to make the group closed and restrict postings only to status reports about the roads leading to the checkpoints, Khoury told Al-Monitor. He said he had to enlist the help of his wife, Dareen, and colleagues Ammar Ledawiyeh and Ali Freitech. The four became an ad hoc committee screening the large number of people who wanted to join the group and took turns administrating.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/04/paletine-gaza-facebook-checkpoint-israeli-traffic-hizma.html#ixzz3YWUqRM51
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Hopefully they can find a way to keep it functioning so that it can be a useful service for people who need it.
As the article says:
But with success came problems, and users began attempting to use the group for political or even financial gain. Some wanted to publish articles or political statements; others wanted to promote businesses or commercial services.
Hopefully the publicity from this piece won't make that problem worse.
Of course, as the creator of the group writes: "Hopefully, the day will come when we will no longer need the group."