Morning

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Feb-5-2003
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E-Ram 06:45It seemed silent and smooth. No confiscations, no arrests. The cars movedslowly, waiting about 10 minutes, not more, to pass the checkpoint.Qalandya: The Taxi dropped us near the taxi station there. Within a minuteabout 10 drivers, very excited, agitated and upset came over to us. They told usthat yesterday, the Border Police took about 10 taxis and grounded them (took the keys and the licences of the owners). This morning, they took about 25 taxis more, and they are going to transfer all the taxis to the airportstrip, like they did yesterday. They told the shocked drivers that they will get back the keys andthe licences after a month at the Neve-Yaakov police station. We took the cellphone numbers of 2 or 3 drivers.M spoke to other drivers and they told her that the soldiers stopped the taxis which reached the Jaba Checkpoint. Then, they ordered all the passengers out of the taxis and told them to go by foot to Abu-Dis, took the licences, then put all the keys and ids in small bags and told them to go to the checkpoint to wait there. They told her that the soldiers behaved very rudely and roughly, kicking and shouting at them all the while.They were told to go after a month to Shuafat police station to get back their ????We tried to help as much as we could. We gave them the telephone number of Moked because there was no answer when we called them. Then, we called Amira Hass and told her the whole story on her answering machine and also gave her the telephone numbers of the drivers. We called IM. to help, since we know she is very involved and knows what to do, in cases like this but were only able to get her answering machine. I tried to speak to Amir Safadi and got him only some hours later. He told me (his explanation was denied later), that the taxis are Israeli and some of them are stolen; that the Palestinians leave the Israeli no. plates on so the soldiers will not be able to identify them, and they will then be able to transport illegals and even terrorists. Very late, in the evening, IM told me the real story: The cars are Palestinian and not Israeli, and the border police try to irritate them. However, because they got such strong reactions from many sources (Machsomwatch, Moked, press (Hass and Reguler)etc., they promised to release the taxis in a day or 2 days.We shall follow up on it!