Qalandiya

A calm morning.

On the morning after the holiday ended only three of the five inspection stations were open when we arrived at 05:10; the lines stretched to the end of the canopied area at the checkpoint entrance. But the two remaining stations opened at 05:20 and the soldier in the “aquarium” was smart enough to let many people through each time he opened the revolving gates so there were relatively long lines at the entrance to the fenced corridors and short ones at the entrance to the pens. His replacement maintained that sensible policy.

The fairly constant flow of people continued until the revolving gate at the end of the left-hand pen remained open to everyone who arrived. The DCL officer came at 06:10 to open the humanitarian gate but returned ten minutes later when he saw that no one wanted to use it. At 05:45, when an EAPPI colleague went through the exit line of the checkpoint (to relieve her counterpart) it took her 14 minutes to move from the end of the line into one of the pens and then exit the checkpoint.

We left at 06:30.