Qalandiya, Mon 26.3.12, Afternoon

We reached Qalandiya at 3:40 PM.  There were two active passageways.  No one was waiting in the passageway leading to the DCO and government offices.

The peddlers with their pushcarts were all standing outside the shed.  They told us that things had been quiet all day and that they had had no problems with the police

Inside the CP, the short lines in the passageways were not progressing rapidly, but they were progressing.  A man in Passageway 4 was refused entry to Jerusalem.  We heard him arguing with the soldiers and offering to leave his I.D. card in their hands if they would let him through to meet a business associate who was waiting for him on the Jerusalem side of the CP.  The soldiers refused and the man returned north to the Ramallah side.  When we asked him what had happened, he pulled out his permit to show us that he had permission to enter Israel, but only from the beginning of April.  He said that as he always had a valid permit, he had not noticed the date.  He continued on his way and later we saw him enter a car with Israeli license plates that had just passed through the CP.  Perhaps his friend decided to conduct their meeting in A-Ram.

At 4 PM we saw that a line of some 30 people was waiting at the bus passenger CP.  We had never been inside, so we decided to take a look.  We boarded a bus (fare was NIS 3.30), traveled 20 yards, disembarked and stood in the new line.  As in the old CP, the soldiers here also let people through three at a time into the examination area.  Actually, this CP was a replica of the original across the way.

When we returned to the northern shed at 4:30, we saw that the carousel at the CP entrance had been locked and a long and growing line of people was waiting in the shed even though the lines in the passageways were quite short.  The soldier on duty controlling the carousel would wait until the internal line was finished before letting a new group of people enter the CP.  The soldier was not paying much attention to what was going on and in fact appeared to be dozing off in front of the CCTV screens.  We phoned headquarters to complain but saw no improvement in service before we left the CP at 5 PM.