Flash Point

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The dirty white van sputtered and stalled as it approached the Gaza checkpoint. The driver looked harried. He leaned forward and tried to start the van quickly. The engine caught, turned over, and stalled again. He glanced in his mirror and ahead of him at the other traffic.

One of the Palestinian guards watched the driver out of the corner of his eye as he waved two more cars through the border checkpoint. The van was about to block the morning’s commuter traffic — the thousands of Palestinians who crossed into Israel every day to work the menial jobs the Israelis didn’t want.

The Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border were much more serious about the traffic crossing into Israel. Exhausted from unending vigilance coupled with interminable boredom, they imagined a bomb in every car. They carried their loaded M-16s in their hands and sweated under their bulletproof vests. To them Gaza was just a large Trojan Horse.

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