Morning

we drove first to el hader. The entrance to Husan was opened and there was no checkpoint there. At the junction (el hard-Husan) there were 4 soldiers and two more on the hills. Many students and others passing through. One transit driver was stopped and keys taken away. We asked the soldier why and got a long explanation about the driver being a "criminal". The soldier explained that Arabs from Israel were not allowed to take Palestinians on that road and the punishment could be confiscation of car keys for 2 months. He got his keys back after an hour.Some young men and women were detained and their id's checked, and were returned after about 20 minutes.Half an hour after we arrived more soldiers and border policemen arrived. We overheard the "baigale" salesman say that he witnessed a man blow up in a phone booth last night in Bethlehem. Apparently that was the reason for so many soldiers.at the Bethlehem checkpoint there was a long line of cars waiting to get in, about a 15 minutes wait. Not many pedestrians. An older border policeman asked us for our id. We wanted to know why and were told he had to check in the "terminal". We got our id's back after 5 minutes.