"They opened the bridge, praise God, and people began crossing," someone wrote in a Facebook group for travelers using the international border crossing with Jordan – known in Israel simply as Allenby Bridge – the only one open to Palestinian residents of the West Bank.
"Are you sure?" someone replied, before adding: "We're having a hard time distinguishing between truth and rumors."
The exchange took place last Thursday at around 2:30 P.M. Four hours earlier, Israeli border inspectors had launched a wildcat strike that lasted three hours. Although their demands were directed at the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority, it was Palestinians seeking to cross the border who suffered the consequences. But what difference did that make? Has restricting Palestinians' freedom of movement ever bothered anyone in Israel?

At present, the crossing is open to passenger traffic in both directions for just five and a half hours a day, from 8 A.M. to 1:30 P.M. Security checks and passport control continue until 5 P.M., or 3:30 P.M. on Fridays.

Palestinians call the crossing Karameh, after the village where Fatah and the Jordanian army fought invading Israeli forces in March 1968. The battle was regarded as a Palestinian victory because, despite the heavy casualties suffered by Jordanian and Palestinian fighters, a relatively large number of Israelis were also killed.
Karameh means "dignity".
In a world in which Israeli authorities force Palestinians to cross the border under humiliating conditions of overcrowding, wasted hours, queue scalping and the constant disruption of their plans, the name Allenby, after the British general whose forces conquered the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, seems particularly fitting.