Sheikh Saed, Silwan

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Observers: 
Idit S., Anat T. (reporting and filming)
Nov-4-2014
|
Morning

 

 

 
 
In Issawiya on the edge of French Hill, an improvised bivouac of police and border police -- a checkpoint is born?
 

6:45 Sheikh Saed
 

On the one hand, no progress with the "upgrading" of the checkpoint has has been made (which is to say that residents will have to get soaked in winter rains because inspections take place on the exposed side), but on the other hand, when the checkpoint will be ready, they will have to undergo computerised inspections, etc., in the small and depressing concrete booth.  Long lines are sure to form.

In any event, today we're not permitted to climb the hill above the checkpoint to area B, or to stand near the checking point.  The reason: only local residents may cross.  A copy of the army spokesperson's instructions regarding the presence of civil rights organisations doesn't help, neither do phone calls to the humanitarian depot or the Jerusalem Envelope headquarters.  They claim to have spoken to the commanders, and somehow their order has not reached the soldiers at the checkpoint.  After 40 minutes of waiting, during which we chat with friendly 10th graders waiting for transportation, we ask Hanna Bar"ag to write an official letter of protest -- and we leave.
 

8:00 Silwan
 

At several junctions leading from the American Road (to Ras al Amud), large stones have been dislodged from the stone fences and await the next demonstration. Scary stones, if truth be told.

Police forces are deployed at these junctions, and wadi Hilweh is crowded with young settler mothers and their children on their way to the kindergarten up the road, in the settlement below City of David.

There is no checkpoint or security presence at the exit towards Dung Gate.
 

8:20 Issawiya
 

On the hill overlooking the camp bordering French Hill, an improvised camp of police and border police has appeared -- tents, a fleet of vehicles, many security personnel (while we were there, a unit of border policemen from the Sharon was present).  It's breakfast time. We wonder if this is the birth of a new checkpoint in Jerusalem?  Time will tell. Almost every vehicle exiting is stopped for a "test" and a fine for some disorder or impropriety is issued. ID's are checked on the computer, and all kinds of municipal debts, or social security, and other state institutions are turned up.  Aside from a youth who is detained and interrogated in the improvised camp, all the rest are released.

A woman who walks all the way up the hill says the buses are almost empty, and few reach Jerusalem, because people are afraid of the delays and complications of these painstaking checks.  She also says that smoke grenades are tossed near the schools and homes of people not involved in any rioting.
 

The tone of a conversation with the commander is optimistic: negotiations with the village leaders all indicate a desire to calm down. The check, we are told, is the trend across the entire country -- every week checkpoints are set up to inspect the safety of vehicles...  We try to say that there's little point in covering up the truth: Jerusalem's mayor has declared his intentions to fight rioting in the suburbs with every means at his disposal: parking tickets, reviving suspended house demolitions, slapping fines for discarded garbage in the streets, tracking debts to the municipality, and so forth -- but it's hard to disguise the purpose of selective punitive action against one segment of the population: it is nothing less than collective punishment.