Back to Contents Walaa Kayyal, a researcher living as a Palestinian in Lebanon also insisted in her interview with Asylos on mobile and volatile checkpoints in addition to fixed checkpoints at the entry of cities: “You can find checkpoints anywhere and you also have mobile checkpoints. So for example, they would call army officers and say, «Go open a checkpoint in this area» and this can be for different reasons. Their number did not decrease. They close one and open another one. They usually do this very, very abruptly. Let me give you an example. Many people here in Lebanon don’t register their motorcycle, or they might not have a driving licence because it costs money, and they are already poor. Now on a Sunday the military decides to put a checkpoint in the middle of Beirut and start stopping all the motorcycles that are driving by, collecting the motorcycles that are not properly registered, and the government cashes the money. [...] I am not aware of all [the checkpoints], but I can tell you that you have a checkpoint before you enter Sidon [a city in Lebanon], you have a checkpoint before you enter Tyre [a city in Lebanon], before you enter Tripoli then you have a checkpoint before you enter South of Lebanon, so you have a checkpoint actually before you enter any district where they just stop you, you show them your ID, and they say go or they ask you some questions before. Also gradually through the years, the Palestinian camps which did not have any army checkpoints, started to add checkpoints. So now if you want to enter any camp, there is an army checkpoint before you enter. They usually ask you why you’re entering. If they find you strange, they check you, they check your car, they check your documents and ask why you are entering, if you’re distributing anything, if you are carrying anything with you. Usually when we go to camps with my work, we have permission from the Lebanese government to distribute food parcels or to distribute laptops, tablets, etc.” (Source: Walaa Kayyal, interview record, 31 October 2022) The same source added that “Usually, the people who are arrested at checkpoints are those who don’t have IDs.” She described controls, arrests and conditions of detention as follows: “They are arrested and they are placed in a police office until someone comes and testify that this person’s name is that, they know his mother, his father, this is the name of his mother, this is the name of his father, and this is his birth date. For stateless individuals, it is very hard because they don’t even have an identification document. They have what they call an identification card and this card is literally written by hand by the mayor of the village where the stateless person is residing. Usually, also Syrians, Palestinians from Syria, and Palestinians from Lebanon, they are stopped at checkpoints, and the army, first, they ask for ID. If you have a Syrian ID, a Palestinian from Syria or a Palestinian from Lebanon, it will show right away since the ID of Palestinians in Lebanon is very well known and visible since it is big and has a different blue colour. As I also explained to you, in Lebanon, there is a lot of discrimination, so if you show the Lebanese card, they let you pass, and if you show the Palestinian identification document, they stop you. They ask you questions such as “where do you live?” If you tell them you live in Beirut: “why are you going to the north? “ “Do you have relatives there?” “ What are you going to do?” “Are you going to have fun?” “Who are you going to visit?” So they open such a mini investigation, and if they want to arrest you, they can arrest you. They can just put you under arrest, move you to a police station, have you do some investigation, let you spend some time in the room, in the police office just doing nothing, and then at night, they tell you, we have crossed your information through our systems and there is nothing, so now you can leave to your house, simply. So the army, they have a system where they check your name. They just, for example, type your name and they see all your basic information and they see if you have any criminal record, and based on what comes out, they deal with you. If they see something in your record they will interpret it as related to your current travel and say «Oh, so you’re going there to steal”, they can decide to keep you longer or even to transfer you to a closer police station. And all of this, if I may say, depends on the army staff or those who are at the checkpoint. If they are in a good mood, and they love Palestinians (because in a lot of Lebanese families they are Palestinians), if their mother is Palestinian or – I don’t know – their brother-in-law is, if they have this Lebanese-Palestinian relationship, this might be a very good excuse to let you go at checkpoints. So this process is very much subjective.” (Source: Walaa Kayyal, interview record, 31 October 2022) 5. Freedom of movement 50