Qalandiya and Atara Bir Zait, Sunday 8.5.11, PM

Qalandiya checkpoint:

-        H' had passed the minimum age that is required for work permits (35) and is married with children. He asked that we try and remove the prevention on him. He knew that if he were to go by his own, the captain would demand that he become a collaborator. He thought that we might be able to bypass this demand.  

-        An old woman on her way to the hospital arrived at the checkpoint escorted by two women who supported her while she was walking. Since there was only one lane open, there was a long line of people that reached the waiting shed, this was in spite of the closure; the women tried to diverse the attention of the soldier that was fortified in her cabin, in hope that she would open a second lane so that the women wouldn't have to wait.  The soldier was busy playing with her cell and didn't lift her head so as to meet the eyes of the people who were in need of her help. One phone call to the operation room and a special turnstile was opened and the women passed. We wanted to pass with them in support, but the soldier locked the special turnstile, entrapping Tamar behind the bars. After a quarter of an hour and endless phone calls to various hot lines, a police officer named Moran spotted the problem with the video cameras and solved it. 

-        A woman escorted by her brother and another person wanted to pass the checkpoint and return to her home in Gaza. Her brother showed us her permit that was valid until the eighth of May (that day). He said that two other people from Gaza who had the same permit were given permission to pass, while his sister was told that because of the closure she couldn't head on and was therefore denied passage. We advised the brother to phone the humanitarian line. They told him that his sister should return on Wednesday and that after the holiday they will grant her permission to pass.

Atara Bir Zait checkpoint:

At the instance we arrived at the checkpoint, two soldiers came towards us. "This isn't a checkpoint!", said one of them while the other, Moshe, shouted at him "Yogev, cock your weapon". It seemed that the soldier standing next to us didn't quite understand the order and asked "and stand here with a bullet in the barrel?" his friend then reminded him of the events that took place a week earlier during which a hand grand was thrown at his direction. Yogev told him to cool it and made a hand gesture that indicated the inaccurateness of this description of events.

At the end of this conversation a vehicle, on which was written "Commander Post- Deputy to the Lieutenant Colonel", arrived and out of it came four soldiers. In a matter of minutes the "non-checkpoint" became an active checkpoint: Moshe stood behind the cement bricks with his weapon aiming at the road, Yogev stood behind him and signaled the vehicle to proceed and the deputy lieutenant commander fiddled with the two-way radio.

At one point they signaled a vehicle to pull over. Five men came out of the car and the driver was told to collect the IDs of all the passengers and hand them to the soldiers. The five were forced to wait by the car, in the cold. A line of vehicle that reached the bottom of the hill had formed behind the parked car. After about five to ten minutes the IDs were given back to their owners and the men were allowed to drive on.

When we had made up our mind to leave, the deputy lieutenant commander told us to wait there for the police. We waited. The police car arrived and a police man and woman told us that we had parked our car in a spot that disrupted the soldiers (why did they call the police? – couldn't the deputy lieutenant commander have told us this himself?). After taking down our personal information we were released