7:00 Sheikh Saed
As usual on Sundays at this hour, the checkpoint is empty. We talked to the young men "transporting" at the top of the hill. They had heard of the big spread about Sheikh Saed in the paper, but are not excited. The week's subsequent events confirm the feeling that any reverberations from that report would be drowned in the new media frenzy.
Silwan
We stand above the Givati parking lot and the entrance to the City of David. Entry from the Old City is forbidden due to work on infrastructure (see below), and the exit has been narrowed by means of police barriers to the width of one car.
Policemen check documents intermittently, only of Palestinians who cross, and are otherwise busy with directing traffic and issuing tickets. We ask a nice policewoman for an explanation, and she begins by saying that this is a routine checkpoint such as we sometimes have in Israeli cities... but then retreats and admits it is a security barrier "because yesterday somewhere here an Arab holding a sword ran and attacked a policewoman and tried to grab her gun -- how would you feel if this had happened to your daughter?" But this event had happened in Salah-a-Din, as we checked.
What had happened was that there were disturbances because of stone throwing at Beit Yonatan and police had even fired live ammunition at the Palestinian demonstrators. On our way we saw dislodged stones and black signs of fire. A police jeep is parked on the side, but not active.
We stop near the municipal team digging up the sidewalk, just next to the pedestrian exit from the City of David. They tell us its's a relatively shallow dig to change sewage and electricity infrastructure along the entire Wadi Hilwa main road.
A religious archaeologist, her head covered, joins us -- she is attached to the municipal diggers. We ask whether they intend to look for antiquities in the course of this work and she says "no, not at all, I am here to make sure nothing of importance is damaged." She is not from the University.
During the week another request from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel arrives, asking us to send them our reports from the Silwan checkpoint. They are considering a complaint, perhaps even going to court.
Sheikh Jarrah
On the contested street we meet two Swiss journalists (internet) accompanied by an Israeli guide. They had asked him to take them to this place. We tell them about the settlers (to one of whom they had spoken before out arrival) and they ask us to tell them what is going on in the neighbourhood. We settle down as usual with our thermos coffee together with the ISM volunteers and residents, and try to summarize, for the benefit of the journalists, all that has been going on. They film and ask questions -- and the guide is very suspicious.
The residents are getting ready for tomorrow's hearing in court where their "friends" (the word moves us -- referring to Israeli activists from the Jerusalem group) will learn whether they will be allowed to come back soon and demonstrate in the area.
As it happens, the following day they are ordered to stay away for 5 months. The residents speak once again of the need to install security cameras such as the settlers have. They get no funding from the Palestinian Authority which hardly bothers with Jerusalem, and they have difficulty dealing with the constant complaints made up by the settlers. I ask them to get two tenders and perhaps we could organize an appeal to the members of some of the organisations with which to help and purchase the cameras.
