Qalandiya, Mon 20.8.12, Afternoon

15:25:  These are the final days of the holiday.  The northern shed is full of people in their holiday best.  More than 120 are waiting patiently in the huge line, over half of them women with little children.  Only 3 internal passageways are operating.  We phoned the Humanitarian Hotline to suggest that they open the Humanitarian Gate for the women and children.  The (female) soldier who answered sounded surprised at the suggestion and promised to see if it was "feasible".  The Humanitarian Gate was never opened, but another, fourth, internal passageway began functioning.  This was not very helpful to the mothers carrying little children in their arms.  The (female) soldier on duty in the booth in the northern shed, which controls the turnstiles at the entrance to the CP, was really lucky the booth is soundproof and she couldn't hear the little children crying in the crowded lines.  The crowding continued all during our shift.  The internal lines progressed very slowly with an impact on the waiting time in the lines in the northern shed.  The western passageway for bus transportation was not operating at all.  It's really sad to see how the I.D.F. is unable to deal with these situations and deploy accordingly so as not to ruin the holiday atmosphere, even when they know about them in advance.  (We understand that the Humanitarian Gate was opened for the holiday at Bethlehem CP.  Only in Qalandiya the authorities saw no reason to open it.)

In the northern shed we met an aristocratic looking woman of 74 dressed in beautiful Bedouin clothes, a resident of Gaza.  She had come to Ramallah to reunite with her dying sister whom she hadn't seen for 12 years (because of the complications in the Middle East).  The sister had died two days ago, and the woman's permit was due to expire on Monday.  She had come to Qalandiya early in the morning to cross into Israel and travel home, but the lines were even longer in the morning and because she has trouble standing on her feet for very long*, she had decided to return to her sister's house and wait until the afternoon.  When we reached the CP she and her two sons (both West Bank residents) had been waiting for two hours to enter the DCO offices and had not made any progress.  We phoned headquarters and asked to speak to the DCO representative about their problem.  We were told that the representative was in a meeting and couldn't be bothered.  We were told to call back in fifteen minutes to see if he was free and we did this several times.  The meetings ended only at 16:10 (during all this time the DCO was closed) and only then could we talk with him.  Hannah also tried to help and discovered that the woman's permit expired only that night so that she could actually go through and reach Gaza.  But the woman and her sons were afraid that Erez CP would be closed and she would not be allowed to reach her home.  In the end they decided to try a get a new permit on Tuesday.

*The woman told us that her problems were the result of falling down the stairs in her Gaza home several weeks ago during one of the frequent periodic blackouts when there is no electricity.