The Real News About Gaza

I arrived in Cairo late Thursday night to accompany an emergency medical shipment to Gaza. I had been following the news about Gaza very closely from the United States. For the last two weeks the TV and radio were constantly blairing in my home, office, and car. I read the newspaper every morning. But in the last day and a half I discovered that the situation for children and families in Gaza is even worse than I thought.

Yesterday I drove to the Rafah Crossing point between Egypt and Gaza. Watching Gaza from a distance of only 300 feet, I saw Israeli airplanes and drones flying over Palestinian homes. I heard shelling from tanks. But even worse, I heard loud booms that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. For a few moments I felt the same excruciating fear that people in Gaza have been living with for fifteen days and nights.

Last night at the hotel I watched Al-Jazeera news with my colleague, Dr. Mona El-Farra. She translated for me as a young boy in a Gaza hospital described seeing his mother, brothers, and sisters killed. I saw photos and video clips of the 230 dead children, the four children who were found without food and water next to the bodies of their dead parent, and hundreds of babies and children with shrapnel wounds, burns, and every other injury imaginable. We don't see this on the news in the US.

The difference in media coverage between the Arab world and the Western, sanitized media is shocking. There is no way, living in the United States, that the people can know about the horror that people in Gaza are living day after day.

2009 greetings from Palestine

Dear Friends and Family,

It's 2009 but I have a hard time calling it a new year. I didn't go to a new year's eve party - they were all canceled out of respect for the people in Gaza. Instead Hazem and I went to dinner with a few friends and came home to once again watch the news.

The broadcasted firework displays, which have always amazed and dazzled me, only reminded me of the sky in Gaza. The lights flashing in their sky killed 6 more people last night. Since Saturday, 400 people have died and more than 2000 are injured. But these numbers barely scratch the surface of the death and destruction.

Islamic University in Gaza City has been turned into rubble. 20,000 students watched their futures crumble.

Hospitals do not have the supplies they need to treat the injured after 18 months of an Israeli blockade. Many of the critically injured could have lived but now they are dying too.

A mother in Gaza explained to a journalist that her children kept saying that they wanted to die with her. They no longer dared to hope their family would survive so they asked simply that they not be left alive without a mother.

The people in Gaza who live through this horror will not be able to go on with their lives. How could a child return to classes at the same school where she watched her classmates die? How could the remaining members of a family rebuild their home in the same place that their mother/brother/child was killed? I know people around the world have come back to life after massacres but it's hard to imagine how people in Gaza will. Especially with the knowledge that Israel could do this again at any time.

It's devastating and nothing we can do now will change any of this. It is just too late.

But still I find myself trying to do something useful. It's too painful to passively take in this information. I've been working closely with Dr. Mona, a dear friend and colleague from Gaza, to send medicine. We started working on a shipment last month but even then the task of getting medical aid into Gaza was daunting. Truckload upon truckload of food, medicine, and other basic supplies were turned away at the border each day. Through Dr. Mona's connections MECA will be able to send in both the vital medications for children and infants that we've been working on as well as emergency supplies that were requested by organizations in Gaza.

Surely this shipment will help some of the victims of the air strikes recover and will help curb the high levels of malnutrition among children. It may even save the lives of children with asthma or serious infections. But what about next week, next year, or the next generation?

There are demonstrations around the world, calls for boycotting and sanctioning Israel, letter-writing campaigns, etc. These are all important and will, I hope, contribute to change. I've been uplifted by the emails and photos friends have sent about the responses to these attacks in their communities.

But the mainstream media is telling such a different story then the one I have seen and heard. I have been updating the MECA website with news about Gaza for the last six days. This has been almost more difficult for me than watching images of five dead sisters pulled out from under their collapsed home or of dozens of bodies splayed on the pavement and the few survivors screaming and kissing their dead friends. I go from one article to another, one news source to another. I search for an article that doesn't try to justify Israel's actions, doesn't try to equate homemade rockets with American-made F16s and apaches. It's hard to find in English.

So I want to say a few things about the ceasefire, targets, and self-defense in my own words.

During the six-month ceasefire between Israel and political factions in Gaza, it was Israel that consistently broke its commitments. Israel killed 22 people in Gaza and injured another 62 during the ceasefire. And at the beginning of this school year, notebooks and school supplies weren't allowed into Gaza (very reminiscent of the sanctions on Iraq). Would you renew a ceasefire that brought continued attacks and continued shortages of food, medicine, and electricity? What would be the point of choosing to die slowly?

The statements from Israeli spokespeople have made me physically ill. Their line about hitting targets reminds me of an argument I had at Brown University right after the US started bombing Afghanistan. The anti-war group I was a part of at the time was highlighting the devastating costs of our bombing campaigns on the people in Afghanistan. An angry student told me that our bombs are so smart we could hit a nickle-sized target on the ground. That may be true but when a bomb hits the nickle, how much of the surrounding area does it blow up too? I've been to Gaza several times over the last five years. I've even been to Gaza when F16s are flying overhead, targeting people in illegal extra-judicial assassinations or buildings. It's a very crowded place and when Israel attacked the Ministry of Interior in 2006, the impact woke me up in an apartment several blocks away and the family next door lost their home. but thankfully not their lives. Just now, Israel carefully targeted a Hamas leader in another illegal assassination. Nine of his family members were killed along with him.

The other question that comes to mind for me is just how smart are the people controlling the smart bombs? Three days ago a military drone blew up a truck and eight men while they were loading oxygen canisters used for welding. Israel maintains they were grad rockets but the photos and reports tell a different story.

The second line Israel keeps feeding an unquestioning media is that it is defending its citizens. The idea that the rockets are a match for the fourth most powerful military in the world is laughable. As is the idea that you can kill people into submission. I don't know if the people in power never learn or if they have ulterior motives. Honestly, I don't care to understand their thinking - it is too inhumane.

I'll leave you with this short message I just received from a friend in Jabalia Refugee Camp, Gaza:

I want to write about suffering of my people and my family in these days
In my house we can't get basic needs such as, No foods, No bread ,and Natural gas
Yesterday , my father went to bakery from 5 AM he waited 5 hours even get one A bundle of bread.
This bread not can't enough for my family because consist of 11 members .But today I go to all bakeries. I can't find any loaf of bread due to be closed.
We and my family cannot communicate with our relatives and friends because of the lack of the connecting network also every hour we have a martyr or even more because of the raining missiles on our homes , mosques and even hospitals ,There is no safe place we can go to.
In the day our life concentrated in burial of the martyrs who were thousands in hospitals after a short farewell or even without a final look because of the time shortage those martyrs are graved in groups imagine that a group of martyrs graved in one grave.
At night our camp like ghosts city no sound but the sound of the various military aircrafts in every attack our heats and the children hearts is shaking.
There is a horror in every minute and it is clear especially on the children, for example, there was four sisters in one family killed from the Israeli occupation ,when stay in their home, and there is children in the south of Rafah.
Also, A woman was going to the bakery to buy bread for her family when she was walking in the street killed the Israeli occupation.
I have two message to the world.
My message to the lovers of peace and freedom in the world.

The First message:
Imagine your life is no electricity ,destroyed homes , voice missiles of the day and night , and no food.
Imagine your children and your family tell you we are afraid of the missiles can not sleep from the Voice of the aircraft.
Imagine you and keep the commentary.

The second message:
Make to end the siege and stop the killings and demolition of houses for our children and to provide assistance to the people through rallies, sit-ins.
Finally, I invite you to come to Gaza and see the Holocaust.

Wishing (and working) for a better future.

Love,
Josie

Please check the MECA website for news, analysis, and actions as well as a way to donate for the medical shipment.
www.mecaforpeace.org

This is a what a massacre looks like

I've spent the last hour watching footage of things I never wanted to see. The backdrop changed but the images were the same. Dozens of bodies splayed on the ground. Children sobbing. Cars and ambulances unloading the injured and dead at hospitals.

I don't have words yet.

Report: At least 140 dead in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City

Date: 27 / 12 / 2008 Time: 11:57

[Ma'anImages] Gaza – Ma'an – At least 140 Palestinians were killed when Israel’s air force fired missiles at more than 30 Gaza City targets at noon on Saturday. Live video broadcasts showed dozens of injured and dead Palestinians in Gaza City, many of them screaming, while Palestinian ambulances raced to the scene. Black smoke billowed over Gaza City into the afternoon as medics evacuated the wounded from targeted de facto government buildings, believed to be the main target in the air raids. Men, women and children were killed in the airstrikes. Others were running in the streets as one correspondent noted that the airstrikes amounted to the largest Israeli military operation in Gaza "for decades." A Reuters correspondent who witnessed the attacks said Israeli fighter jets targeted the Gaza City port and de facto government-run buildings. It is believed that 33 members of Fatah, who were held in Hamas prisons, died in the airstrikes. A spokesperson for the Israeli military had no immediate comment on the airstrikes. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called for a massive response to the airstrikes and a renewal of operations within Israel. He also asked Palestinians to “remain patient in light of these Israeli crimes.” Sources within Hamas told Ma’an that every de facto security building in the Gaza Strip was attacked. Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batsh said that the Israeli attack amounts to “open war” against Palestinians, intended “to put down the resistance.” Al-Batsh condemned international and Arab States for their “silence on such massacres.” He also swore that what had happened “would never make the resistance factions surrender.” ***Updated 13:07 Bethlehem time

Opening Hebron

This week the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee is organizing different events and actions to bring life to the old city of Hebron.

For decades Israelis have been living illegally in the old city, taking over Palestinian homes and throwing garbage, dirty water, and chunks on concrete onto the Palestinian merchants and passersby. Many shops have been closed by Israeli military orders but even more shops are closed because the Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers harass people and--prior to HRC's renovation of streets and removal of roadblocks--made it nearly impossible for cars to reach the old city.



Some of the major streets in the old city are closed off to Palestinians completely.


I went to Hebron on Tuesday with my husband and two friends from California. I had to do some last minute shopping for the annual holiday bazaar (mark your calendars for Dec 13!) at one of the three open textile shops in the old city. We walked passed dozens of closed shops and only saw a handful of other people. It should be a bustling market like the old cities in Bethlehem and Jerusalem but instead Hebron is a ghost town. (Note: I purchased keffiyahs made at a factory in Hebron but thanks to globalization, this factory is now competing with Chinese-made keffiyehs.)

My friend and tour guide extraordinaire met us in the old city and took us on a mini walking tour to see some of the racist graffiti by settlers, the wire nets that catch some of the garbage and stones settlers throw out their windows, and examples of the renovations that HRC has done to make it easier for people to live and work in the old city.

Of course, for Hebron to really come back to life, the streets, the houses, and the shops must be returned to their rightful owners. But in the meantime HRC distributed thousands of Palestinian flags to businesses and homes to show that despite the constant attempts to drive people out, Hebron is a Palestinian city.

You can join the HRC's campaign by sending a letter (sample below) to lift the closures:

Introduction to the letter:

The sufferance of 180,000 Palestinian citizens continues in Hebron Old City due to Israel’s eight-year-long closure of the city centre.
United Nations humanitarian affairs reports indicated that more than 101 roadblocks, barricades and military checkpoints are preventing the pursuance of normal life in the city and are tearing its old part to shreds, for the sole purpose of protecting 400 Israeli settlers living in the city.
We invite you to take part in the National Campaign Against Israeli Closures in Hebron Old City launched by city citizens and organizations calling for an end to this blockade by sending the attached letter, or any other text requesting the lift of the siege, to the addresses of Israel’s Prime Minister, its Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs, and to the Speaker of the Knesset.

Text of the letter:

We refuse the closure imposed on Hebron’s Old City and demand that the Israeli government and Israeli occupation authorities lift the blockade, thus allowing Palestinian citizens to enjoy freedom of travel and normal mobility in their own city.

Addresses to which the letter should be sent:

Prime Minister Office - pmo.heb@it.pmo.gov.il,
Tel. 02-6705555, Fax. 02-6705475

Minister of Defense (Barak) sar@mod.gov.il,
Tel. 03-6976663, Fax. 03-6976218

Also, please send a copy of the letter to us at the following e-mails:
hebroncampaign@hotmail.com
hebroncampaign@gmail.com
hebroncampaign@yahoo.com

Olive Picking with Ibdaa

Olives are a staple in Palestine. Every meal has home-made olives or tasty olive oil. People use olive oil soap in their homes. They carve olive wood into prayer beads, candle holders, and nativity scenes.

I've been told some of the olive trees in Palestine date back to Roman times. The trees aren't just part of the landscape - they are the landscape. They cover the hills outside Jenin, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and the plains outside Gaza, adding texture and color.

October is olive harvest season in Palestine. There are international delegations, festivals, and other activities to mark the olive harvest each year. But Israel's illegal construction of settlements, walls, and creation of "security" zones is threatening the cultural and economic importance of olive trees by confiscating and uprooting groves of trees.

When I go back to the US after a trip to Gaza and describe the restrictions on movement, the destruction caused by bombings and tank shellings, and the lack of basic goods, people always ask me how families in Gaza are surviving. I tell them I don't know. Of course, not everyone survives. 252 patients have died in Gaza since June 2007 because they were not allowed to seek medical treatment abroad and the shortages of medicine and electricity in Gaza have devastated the medical system. 62 children have been killed this year as a direct result of the Israeli occupation. And the economic situation in Gaza is desperate with 80% living below the poverty line.

But I learned something last week when Dr. Mona called me from the olive groves outside Beit Hanoun. The real answer is that the people in Gaza support each other. Dr. Mona went with a group of local volunteers to help farmers pick their olive trees near the very militarized border between Israel and Gaza. They went there and donated their labor. But more than that they gave moral support to these farmers who were scared to walk to their lands because they could see Israeli tanks in the distance. Dr. Mona held out the phone so I could hear some of the volunteers and farmers singing traditional songs as they worked their way from one ancient tree to another.

This morning I had the chance to go to the village of Nahalin to help families harvest their olive groves with 25 children, staff, and volunteers from Ibdaa. Nahalin is about 20 minutes southwest of Dheisheh Refugee Camp. The village is surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements and their bypass roads. Much of their agricultural land has been stolen.

The first place we went with the villagers was to a grove of olives next to the settlement of Betar. This settlement, like all settlements, is perched on the top of a hill like a military fortress with an army jeep patrolling the edges of the settlement.

We only stayed in Nahalin for three hours since some of the girls had to get back for their basketball game. We were completely exhausted from these few hours work since none of us are used to it. But it was also energizing for me to witness bonds being built between people from a refugee camp and a village. Israel has worked so hard at creating divisions between Palestinians. They've closed roads, constructed checkpoints, privileged Christians over Muslims, and tried many other colonial divide and conquer tactics.

It was just a few hours but today children and adults from Dheisheh Refugee Camp who were uprooted from their farmlands 60 years ago went to pick olives like their grandparents and great-grandparents used to and they broke some of the barriers and stereotypes separating them from other Palestinians.

Ramadan in Palestine complete with Israeli invasions, katayef, and checkpoint closures

Ramadan started last Monday. This is the first time I've been in Palestine during Ramadan and I didn't plan on fasting. I like to eat all day and I LOVE my snack breaks during work. Plus religion is just not for me. But I realized quickly that this is a family holiday, everyone comes home from work in time to eat together and it seemed like a nice tradition to join in on. The first day was rough, very rough. My mind was foggy by 3pm and I was bickering with people over nothing. But it's getting easier (although maybe you'd get another opinion from people who have to be around be all day).

My husband's mother and sisters have been catering to my very particular palate. They make me a plate of Arabic salad without tomatoes and a main dish without meat every day. After dinner every night we play games and the whole family has mastered Uno. We've also discovered that my nine-month-old niece loves green onions and lemons but not sweets.

With the game playing and family time I can sometimes go days without really feeling the Israeli military occupation. Even with the concrete wall in front of our house I've learned to forget and go on with "normal life." On Thursday Hazem and I picked up katayef, a pancake like dessert that you bake with cheese or nut stuffing and then dip in sugar syrup, and continued down the main road towards his family's house. We had called ahead to make sure no one else brought dessert so we knew there were Israeli soldiers near the house but we hoped that by the time we got there they'd have moved on.

Israeli jeeps block the main road forcing cars
to turn around and try another route.

When we reached the area in front of Ibdaa Cultural Center we could see Israeli jeeps blocking the main road ahead of us. So we took a detour up the hill to the right and tried to come down the hill on another street that leads direct to his family's house. From the hill we could see a jeep and a giant trucked parked right outside his family's house. Israeli soldiers were walking through the area with guns pointed in every direction. We drove down to the bottom of the hill but the road was blocked there too. So we waited.

It was getting close to sundown when everyone breaks their fast so we decided to try a third route to the house. We went back up the hill (his family lives on a hill opposite the one we were on) and farther south before coming down. The main road was open here but there were soldiers blocking the road as we got closer to his house. They had two jeeps and a large truck just to block the road. So we waited with many, many other people anxious to get home and eat. Finally some military vehicles started leaving. We saw five or six leave and then a few minutes later the ones blocking the road pulled out. As we turned up the hill towards the house we saw a line of at least five more military cars leaving.

The first group of military jeeps leaving Dheisheh

Refugee Camp.

We entered the house and sat down to eat just as the sheikh's voice rang out over the loud speaker of the mosque. It took more than an hour to drive from our apartment in Bethlehem to his family's house, a drive that is normally about six minutes. On Friday I saw some video footage taken by an international volunteer at Ibdaa. It shows soldiers in front of Ibdaa and the main entrance to Dheisheh Refugee Camp firing "rubber-coated" bullets* into the streets of the camp. I guess we're supposed to expect this as a response to the rocks that were thrown at the jeeps and soldiers. But while the Israeli soldiers wear helmets, thick steel toed boots, and bulletproof vests, the kids are just out there in their jeans and t-shirts.

Friday brought more awful reminders of the Israeli occupation. I had to go to Jerusalem to drop off papers at the British Consulate for two students from Dheisheh since they are not allowed to enter Jerusalem. I had also planned to visit a friend's mother in the hospital. She lives in Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip and was allowed permission to leave for a surgery in Jerusalem after Dr. Mona and several internationals in Gaza spent three long days at the Erez Crossing petitioning Israeli authorities to allow her out. She missed her scheduled surgery and is now waiting in the hospital far from her friends and family for the new surgery date on Tuesday.

So it's Friday morning and I've collected all the necessary papers at Ibdaa and I set out to the main intersection in Bethlehem (the only traffic light in the whole district) to catch a bus to Jerusalem. When I arrive there is no bus which is very unusual and someone tells me they cancelled the regular service today. I guess this should have triggered something but it didn't. I was in a hurry so I got back in a shared taxi and made my way to the Bethlehem-Jerusalem terminal (it's a checkpoint but when Israel built a warehouse size building and equipped it with hand scanners, x-ray machines, endless turnstiles that are switched on and off by someone watching you on camera, and catwalks for soldiers above your head, they renamed it a "terminal").

There were tons of taxis which is very unusual since it has gotten really difficult for Palestinians to get permits to enter Jerusalem so the area is usually empty. As I walked towards the 8 meter wall (you have to pass through a door in the wall to get to the warehouse sized checkpoint building) I noticed a crowd and another concrete wall. The Israeli military had constructed a small wall blocking the way to the checkpoint with three doorway sized breaks in this new wall. I noticed women gathered at one break in the wall so went over there. No one was moving. Soldiers were standing silently blocking the way to the checkpoint. And the crowds were standing patiently waiting for someone to let them pass.

It was the first Friday of Ramadan and many people from all over the West Bank were on their way to pray in Jerusalem. Finally one young soldier pulled out a bullhorn and starting screaming in bad Arabic that the checkpoint was closed and everyone should go home. He put the bullhorn right up in people's faces screaming and then moved down the line to the other groups of people waiting at the breaks in the wall. I wanted to smack him. But everyone else quietly backed up explaining to him and other soldiers how far they'd come and how long they'd waited. I arranged with the consulate to send the papers by fax and got to leave the sweltering heat but as I left even more people were arriving hoping to make their way to the Dome of the Rock, a right guaranteed under international law.

In other news, Hazem and I bought a car! We're really excited. It's a bit complicated but he actually had a car before but it had Israel license plates (Israeli used cars are much cheaper because there is less demand for them) so it was technically illegal for him, as a Palestinian with a West Bank ID, to drive the car. We still used it driving around Bethlehem but couldn't use it to leave the Bethlehem area. We thought about keeping the Israeli plated car, putting it in my name and then trying to get him a permit to use the car. But this permit would only be valid in Bethlehem and if we wanted to go to Ramallah I would have to take the car through Jerusalem since Israeli cars aren't allowed on stretches of the Palestinian road between Bethlehem and Ramallah and he would have to take a shared taxi that goes around Jerusalem through two checkpoints and meet me in Ramallah since he is not allowed to enter Jerusalem. So Palestinian plates it is...

*Actually metal bullets wrapped in a hard rubber shell. These bullets have killed and injured many Palestinians

Palestinian boy sent back at checkpoint, visiting destroyed villages

June 22, 2008 Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine.
Deborah Agre, MECA staff

Several of us from the MECA went from the Bethlehem area to Jerusalem by bus for more shopping for the Holiday Bazaar (we’re going to have some really great stuff this year—December 13). The bus was stopped and we all got off at the checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Everyone showed his or her permits or passports. Palestinians who don’t have Jerusalem residency or Israeli citizenship have to apply for special permits to enter the Jerusalem area. (Additional permits are required to go further. For an excellent article about this system click here.) A boy of around 13 handed the Israeli soldier something, but it wasn’t the right thing. They yelled at him in Hebrew. He stood there and as more soldiers came over his brow got more and more furrowed. MECA director Barbara Lubin put her arm over his shoulder and told the soldiers he was with us. One soldier started shouting at us that this was the border and a Palestinian can’t enter Israel without permission, just like an Israeli couldn’t enter the US without permission. OK, so if this is the border and Israel is on one side, what’s on the other side? Not a Palestinian state. Not any entity that can prevent Israelis from coming in; from stealing land and water, from establishing settlements, building walls and Israeli-only roads, arresting and attacking people. Besides, Israel actually has no established, internationally-recognized borders.

The boy was left at the checkpoint, far from town. I was left, as I so often am here, wondering if there was something more we could have or should have done.

Later that week our friend Ziad (Director of the Ibdaa Cultural Center) got a permit to enter the Jerusalem area for three days and zero nights. Ibdaa and some other community centers in West Bank refugee camps organized a trip for kids to visit some of the villages in “48” (AKA Israel) that their families lived in before the ethnic cleansing of 1947-48. When the trip ended Ziad still had a few hours left on his permit and another friend from the US had a rented car. So four of us took off to visit Zakaria, Ziad’s father’s village and other villages about a half hour from Dheisheh. I saw two things there I hadn't seen on previous visits: 1) An area of incredibly beautiful green mountains and valleys; 2) The return of the Palestinian refugees is more than a romantic desire, political demand, or compliance with international law. Here is the land their parents and grandparents left so recently and so close to where they live now in crowded cement refugee camps. These aren’t little anachronistic villages (though there are the remains of some). They are big, big spaces, most of them unpopulated or sparsely populated. Those who argue that if the refugees return Israel will no longer be a Jewish state are making their own counter-argument: Israel was created and is sustained by a grave injustice, one that is still possible to correct. Yes, I fully understand, as do most Palestinians, that it does get more complicated when we’re talking about returning to land, or even homes, where people—most of whom were born after 1948—are living their lives. Complicated, difficult, and painful. But not impossible to reconcile the rights of current residents with the rights of the refugees.

Zakaria is now a small bedroom community near Jerusalem. “Look what they have here for their children,” Ziad noted as we passed a large, well-equipped playground and a basketball court. “Look how Shlomo can come home from work, sit in the garden and look at this beautiful view. How can they sleep at night?” We all sighed, knowing that they sleep just fine. As we walked through another village, now a national park where “Shlomo can come with this family and have a nice barbecue,” I ask Ziad how he feels when he comes here. “Here, at least I can breathe,” he says sadly.

More immediate, and nearly as fervent among young people in Dheisheh Refugee Camp is the desire to go to the beach. It is really, really hot. They are on summer break. The beach is only an hour away. But even if they get permits to enter the Jerusalem area—which takes a while for young women, is virtually impossible for young men—they are still not allowed to go further to reach to the Mediterranean. But someone figured out that, at least for the moment, foreigners driving rented cars with Israeli plates are not stopped at checkpoints. So, the beach shuttles have begun, and I’m sure will continue through the summer until someone gets caught, and the Israeli soldiers begin stopping rental cars at checkpoints.