Afternoon

When we arrived at 3.45 there was no checkpoint at the gas station. Up the road where the houses are we did see soldiers but otherwise there were people passing freely without being checked and over the 'steps' leading to the little booth and into the field. But within a few minutes three soldiers came down the street and immediately started threatening three men who had their heads over the cement barrier that either they should get down or they would get a bullet in the head. The same was shouted to two young men standing the other side of the wall on a rather high pavement. They immediately stopped all people passing through the field and sent them the long way up the road towards the mosque. There was no way that they would allow anyone to go through there though people had been passing freely before they came. We tried to intervene for one elderly woman but with no luck. T. told us that the only way they allowed people through was through the mosque and that there the way to pass was very difficult and also dangerous. When we went up the road, a steep walk for the elderly or those with small children we saw why. People now have to climb over a fence in both directions... first on to a wall and then over blunt spikes. A further obstacle was the three large blocks which had been put to make the way to what had once been a muddy path impassable. The previous week the people of the mosque had filled the pathway with white stones so that people could pass over without being in the mud. But one can hardly get to it .There is a gate there at the mosque higher up which the guard had opened but afterwards told us but that he did not want to inform people of this too openly in front of the soldiers. It is a very humiliating climb over this wall. The three of us then climbed over to the jeering laughter of the soldiers there.An unpleasant woman soldier, chewing gum with her mouth open had also shouted at us telling us not to bother the soldiers. The Arabs who had been detained started to tell the women to go higher up to the mosque gate but before this a man had arrived with a heavily set woman who looked as if she was just out of hospital and somehow he and the guard got the woman over the wall and gate. The soldiers were checking the cards of those going into the village, those who had green or orange IDs were stopped but the ids were checked fairly quickly and they were sent on the way. Up the road to the left every conceivable entrance from any other way had been blocked. There is a feeling that the wall will be extended to as faras it can go and that eventually people on the other side will have no choice but to come through Maaleh Edumim. It is impossible to understand the reason for this inhuman treatment of an entire village.