Qalandiya, Mon 12.11.12, Afternoon

When we reached Qalandiya at 3:30 PM, there was a traffic jam in the southern square.  The pedestrian CP was almost empty and three passageways were active.  We saw that someone was fixing the turnstile at the entrance to the DCO passageway while being guarded by two men.  We stopped to speak with the security people who told us that the CP was under attack every afternoon lately from groups of young men who were throwing whatever they could find:  stones, glass bottles and paint.  We went outside to see if we could see any signs of this activity, but we found no evidence.  Everything just looked as neglected as usual.

At 4 PM the western passageway for bus passengers shut down and a whole crowd of people, students and others, flowed into the old part of the CP.    At the same moment, two of the three active passageways stopped operating (one of them for maintenance work).  Long lines formed immediately with more than 25 people waiting in each of two passageways.  Those on line in passageway 4 continued waiting even though the line never moved.  It turned out that the soldiers on duty had left!  Because of the long internal lines, the entrance to the CP from the northern shed was also closed and a long line formed there as well.  We phoned headquarters and asked them to do something about conditions.

At 4:15 another passageway opened so that once again there were two active passageways.  An old Palestinian woman, with no ID papers, entered the examination area in passageway 2, and the soldiers, who could not deal with her, just abandoned their post.  We phoned headquarters and asked them to send the DCO representative.  He appeared quite quickly, and talked to the woman but did nothing at all, leaving her to her own devices.  After another fifteen minutes, the woman found her own way out of the passageway and then the soldiers returned and resumed work.  But then, with no announcement or warning, passageway 4 shut down.  People who had waited in line for half an hour or more, suddenly discovered that they had waited in vain.  They all raced to get in line in another passageway.  I heard one man complain as he passed me that even a dog receives better treatment at our hands than a Palestinian.  At this time Passageway 1 was re-opened so that once again 2 passageways were active.

We saw that Dov the Policeman was standing near the post in the northern shed and we walked over to talk with him.  We asked him why the passageway for bus passengers had shut down and he told us that it was due to the youths throwing stones.  This time when we went out to see what was happening we actually did see the stone throwers as well as a group of soldiers getting ready to return fire.