Qalandiya, Mon 26.11.12, Afternoon

At 03:40 PM, four passageways were operating in the CP with very few people on line in each passageway.  Immediately on our arrival, Passageway 4 shutdown in the face of 8 people who had been waiting on line for half an hour (as they told us), some of them workers on their way to the evening shift at work in the Atarot Industrial Park.   The people scurried to get in line in the remaining lines.  After about 5 minutes, the passageway reopened – apparently it had closed down for technical reasons. 

(There appears to be a serious need for a solution for workers who have to get to work on time.  Perhaps the IDF could open a dedicated passageway for such people?)

When we arrived at Qalandiya we saw that the western passageway for bus passengers was not working.  One of the peddlers at the CP told us that the passageway had been closed for two hours.  Why?  No one knows!  There was no sign of youths throwing stones, so why wasn’t the passageway operating? In any event, at 4 PM the active passageways quickly filled up with students coming home from classes in Ramallah. 

At 04:20 PM passageways 2 and 3 closed down leaving only 2 active passageways, both of them overflowing.  As a result, entrance to the CP from the northern shed was closed and a line of 30 quickly formed there as well.

We saw that a new sign had been fixed to the fence in the northern shed:  “Photography is forbidden” in three languages.  The sign didn’t specify who had issued the order.