Afternoon

When we arrived the soldiers were all at the roundabout and there seemed to be some detainees, but after about 10 minutes the jeep arrived at the wall and there were 8 men being detained. The soldiers were not pleasant and we did not have much interaction with them. They said that they were checking the id's and could keep the detainees for one or two hours. We said we would wait until all were released. The men said that they were glad that we were there as otherwise they would have been beaten. In the meantime people were climbing over the wall. It was rather like watching sheep trying to get through a narrow space. For the women it was,as always, very embarrassing. The men were released one at a time after about an hour. They had to sign a document which from what we understood said that they knew that if they went to Jerusalem again they would be emprisoned. They said that they had been working on the road for a contractor very near the wall when the soldiers took their id's from them. We had a lot of anger directed against us by people passing. The checking seems random with the main point of harrassment at the roundabout.