How war in Gaza impacts my handyman

When we focus on the big picture, we forget how the lives of everyday people outside the war zone are disrupted. A day in the life of one of them when he came to do a job in our home, with maps

Last week, I had an opportunity to experience first-hand how Israel’s war with Gaza impacts the everyday lives of Palestinians in the West Bank who are just trying to do an honest day’s work.

While Gaza gets almost all the attention, it’s easy to miss that West Bank Palestinians, who did not take part in the October 7 massacre and did not rise up en masse when Israel was at its most vulnerable, have paid a dear price. Israel barred Palestinian workers from entering Israel in the wake of the massacre and kept the West Bank closed for several months. Some 150,000 Palestinian families have lost their main source of income, causing despair.

In recent months, some Palestinians have been able to get permits to work in Israel, but the conditions are very limited. One of them is a 50-something handyman and father of five named Wael. I want to share our experience together last week.

In short, he is a fantastic, talented and meticulous handyman. He came highly recommended, and so when we needed to redo the tiles in one of our bathrooms, we contacted him. He told me that he could work last Monday. Aware that Palestinians can be charged exorbitant amount to get from the checkpoint where they cross into Israel to their destination in Israel, I offered to pick him up. He politely obliged.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, or the ordeal he had to endure just to get there.

THE ODYSSEY

He told me to pick him up from the Qalandiya checkpoint near Ramallah. I didn’t realize that he lives in a village right next to the Modi’in checkpoint less than 15 minutes from my home. Before the Second Intifada (2000-05), he could have made the journey himself, and it would have looked like this:

However, the army only allows him to enter Israel by foot through Qalandiya. I don’t know why.

That meant he had to wake up at 3:30 am so he could eat breakfast for Ramadan and then leave before dawn for Qalandiya via a circuitous route created by Israel so that Israeli Jewish settlers and Palestinians don’t have to travel on the same road. Which means his journey started out like this:

Thus, he started out 13 kilometers away from us and wound up 24 kilometers away. After a half-hour journey, he was at Qalandiya by 6:05, when he called me to say he was getting in line to go through the security check at the checkpoint. It took him nearly an hour to get through, after which he WhatsApped me his location. Then I made the 25-minute journey, which looked like this:

I picked him up around 7:30, thinking we’d be back in Modi’in by 8. How wrong I was!

I hadn’t thought about the fact that by driving from Modi’in to Qalandiya, I was also crossing a checkpoint (note in the above map that it was moved 600 meters east of where the armistice line is, which is the internationally recognized border, unilaterally claiming extra territory to be “Israel”). He’s not allowed to use that checkpoint, although it’s the nearest one to him. His only way to get to Modi’in legally is to travel through Jerusalem. There are no checkpoints in that direction since the Qalandiya checkpoint is technically the border with Greater Jerusalem.

If this isn’t making sense to you, you’re not alone. For allegedly security reasons, a Palestinian who has already gone through a security check at one point isn’t allowed to go through another checkpoint, but he is allowed to enter Israel via another road without going through any more checkpoints. Go figure.

So, when we reached the intersection between the road where I’d picked him up and the Jerusalem-Modi’in highway, instead of turning right to go home, we had to turn left. Then we hit a major traffic jam. In the end, we only reached Modi’in at 9:10. Same Palestinian, one fewer security check, an extra 70 minutes of travel time. The 47-kilometer trip (to legally avoid the checkpoint through which we could have made a 24-kilometer trip) looked like this:

That wasn’t the only inconvenience. He didn’t bring his tools with him because that would have cost an inordinate amount of time for soldiers to inspect them individually and perhaps confiscate some. So, he arranged for a friend inside Israel to deliver the tools separately to our home.

Finally, he was able to get to work, and the result was terrific. The whole job took a little over six hours, including the best cleanup by a handyman we’ve had in years. I drove him back toward his village, dropping him off at a blocked-off access road about 10 minutes from our home. From there he could walk to the other side of the concrete blocks and hail a ride back to the village, while I drove on, exited by a settlement 10 minutes down the road, made a U-turn and came back home. My trip looked like this:

I’ve been thinking about this journey all week. Once upon a time, one professional with his tools would have made a 20-minute commute each way to install my tile with plenty of time to take on a second job in the city. 18 months ago, that might have taken him 90 minutes one way and 30 minutes the other, with the client spending 20 minutes driving him to and from the nearest checkpoint. Last week, doing the job became a three-vehicle odyssey, costing the professional 4 hours one way and 30 minutes the other, the client 1 hour, 40 minutes one way and nearly 30 minutes the other and a colleague a detour from his own work. All that time wasted traveling and waiting rather than working.

I’m grateful that we had the means to bring in the best person for the job and that he was available. A few months ago, that wouldn’t have been possible at all.

This is but one emergent phenomenon resulting from the endless conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, which disrupts normal relationships daily. It is worth remembering, that like with any complex system, the Israel-Gaza war reverberates across many fronts, disrupting the lives of countless individuals. The longer it drags on, the more uninvolved individuals suffer in ways we don’t see.