Afternoon

When we reached the south point at Qalandya, a man called us over, claiming his ID card was taken on Saturday between 13:00 and 14:00. He said he’d been to Bet El and it wasn’t there. We took the details of his green card - which he says was confiscated because the part with his children’s names in it was torn - and went to speak to Yohai, in charge of Qalandya, at the northern part – he checked and couldn’t find it at the Hamal either. Later we phoned the details in to the Moked – and heard from them before we left that the details we’d been given were inaccurate, since the ID card had been taken away from him somewhere else. We discussed the fact that we should have gotten more specific details rather than surmised that it had all happened here.At the north part of Qalandya:Today there’s a curfew at Ramallah, so there’s very little activity at the north point. There are hardly any people with Palestinian ID cards at all.An ambulance came to the north part at 16:30 and was let through.A female soldier told someone while checking his papers that “next time we won’t let you through with a torn blue ID card”.A Palestinian from Gaza who has some sort of permit until 7 PM is detained, Yohai, the commander of the checkpoint, phones in order to see if he can let him through. We reported this to the Moked.To someone else’s question a soldier said that tomorrow whoever has a blue ID card can come through until 9 PM. Somebody else comes by and tells us that the Checkpoint was opened this morning at 8:30 instead of at 6 AM.A teacher – in charge of dormitories at a nearby school which is also an orphanage – he live in Ramallah and comes to work at the school every day – tonight he has night shift at the school but with his orange ID and his school card (which let him in every other day) they don’t let him in today. Calling Assaf (deputy of the Mahat from the military spokesman – whose additional phone number is: 053-734040 to see if this cannot be considered a humanitarian case, and let him in. His answer, 25 minutes later was that it’s not considered “humanitarian” unless the person at the checkpoint is ill or something. But Assaf also said that the curfew would be ended in an hour – so we suggested that the teacher have a cup of coffee in a warm place and return in an hour.2 student from Jenin had gone to visit Ramallah yesterday and now are not allowed to go back home.