Qalandiya, Mon 20.6.11, Afternoon
for disabled people? Why can't people avail themselves freely of the services provided at the CP (who needs a post office at Qalandiya if it's inaccessible to the public)? In short, this place is a mess!
Qalandiya, 14:50: There were no traffic problems for a change, traffic was flowing in the southern square. Although the vehicle CP was full (and remained so all afternoon), cars were not backed up along the road to Ramallah. There was a line of 20 or so people waiting in the passageway for bus passengers on the western side of the CP. The flow of people to Qalandiya "Terminal" was quite weak and there was no line at all in the northern shed. But the two active inner passageways were very full (about 40 people in each). Despite repeated requests to headquarters and the Passageway Unit, things improved only towards the very end of our shift. A group of 5 people were waiting on line in Passageway 5 to the DCO, some of them only wanted to reach the Post Office. We tried for half an hour to convince the soldiers to open the passageway and, when they finally announced that the passageway was open, they added that the Post Office had already closed.
In the meantime we met a man in his late 70's, an amputee sitting in a wheel chair and accompanied by a young family member. The two were waiting by the Humanitarian Gate, on their way from Jerusalem to Ramallah. We made some telephone calls, trying to reach someone who would help them on their way. We spoke with headquarters, with the DCO, with the DCO representative (who shouted back over the phone that this was not his responsibility and why were we bothering him), with the "humanitarian hotline", whom did I leave out? Everyone promised that help would be forthcoming very quickly, in a minute, shortly….and half an hour passed. After a 40 minute wait, the man stood up on his one leg and hopped over to the turnstile (with difficulty), hung on to it and somehow managed to reach the Ramallah side. I grabbed him and supported him until his grandson (?) managed to get through with the wheel chair. What a horrible experience! How shameful! I still haven't calmed down. As Tamar asked (rhetorically) many years ago: "Is this the way to run the kibbush*?"
Meanwhile the lines in the passageways continued to advance very, very slowly and the people who were hurrying to their day's/night's work were under a great deal of pressure. We saw quite a few people giving up in despair and leaving the CP. When we saw 3 young girls leaving, we stopped them to ask where they were going and they told us that they'd given up on Qalandiya and would try to get to Jerusalem via Hizmeh CP. We called headquarters once again and spoke with Danielle and Shlomi, both of them polite and calm soldiers. They promised that an additional passageway would be opened shortly to deal with the pressure.
16:10: We left the CP and went out to the northern square where we saw on ambulance waiting to deliver a cancer patient from Ramallah to the hospital in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem ambulance was already waiting in the southern parking lot, but the Ramallah ambulance was not allowed through – once again the soldiers claimed there was "no coordination" (although the driver with whom we spoke told us that he had started out only after notification from Beit El that there was coordination). Hannah and I called headquarters and the humanitarian hotline until somehow, someone managed to perform "coordination" (after the ambulance had waited at least 20 minutes in the hot June sun).
16:30: Three passageways were now working and the number of people on line had dropped dramatically.
*kibbush – "the conquest", Israel's status in the West Bank