Qalandiya, Mon 2.4.12, Afternoon

Qalandiya was not quiet today.  One after another young men and boys ran up to the CP, right among the vehicles waiting in line to cross to Jerusalem, and rained down a hail of rocks.  At least one windshield was broken.  Our friend the candy peddler said that this had been going on since 13:30.  A group of soldiers fired tear gas canisters at the boys and then retreated to the Israeli side of the CP.  Eyes and nostrils were burning.  Natanya was caught in the square until a Palestinian youth pulled her to safety behind a concrete barrier.  I fled into the pedestrian CP to recover.

Two passageways were active but not full.  However the soldier on duty in the northern shed kept the entry carousel closed so that a line of 40 formed and waited in the narrow barred entry passage.  After several minutes the PA system announced that the western passageway for bus passengers had been closed.  As a result the flow of people into the CP got stronger and stronger.  Despite this state of affairs, the authorities did not open another passageway for the crowd of people waiting nor were conditions alleviated by feeding a steady stream of people into the internal passageways.

A laborer returning to Palestine from his day's work in Israel took the opportunity to complain to us that he had to wait in line three hours every morning (from 3 AM to 6 AM) to pass through Qalandiya CP so he could get to work.  He angrily attributed these conditions to the fact that the soldiers on duty don't do their job (as we have repeatedly reported).  How do these people survive?

Towards the end of our shift a soldier approached the post in the northern shed accompanied by a frightened-looking Palestinian boy of about 15.  The soldier told us that the boy, the son of one of the peddlers selling fruits on the road to A-Ram, had been caught without papers in Jerusalem and was being returned to the Palestinian police.  Suddenly, the boy's tiny younger brother, Haled the water boy (aged 6 or 7), came up to us. He looked very worried but proudly told us that his brother had been arrested yesterday by the soldiers for throwing rocks at the CP.  The soldiers had delivered the boy to the police in Muscovia Station where the boy had spent the night.