Afternoon

As we reached Abu Dis, a Palestinian complained that 2 of his workers working on the road had been arrested by the Border Police. We saw them waiting at the gas station while the police were checking their ID's . When the borderpolice returned, they started arresting groups of people, taking away their ID, searching their bodies in a very aggressive way. The detained Palestinians told us that when we’re not there, they put people into the jeeps and beat them there.They asked us to stay around till they get released. A worker in the gas station told C that there is an empty building (which was supposed to be the “Cliff Hotel”) on the top of the hill, where the border police beat people up – he also said that he saw someone taken from there on a stretcher. We waited until all the detained groups of Palestinians were released. We were asked several times in a very aggressive way by the border police to stand 50m away from them complaining that we were interrupting the completion of their duties. They even asked for our ID's and threatened that we will be arrested. We called Safadi but he was in a meeting (for 2hrs), we asked him to call us back but he didn’t. The no of the jeep - 22552.In the middle of this surrealistic scenario, a Palestinian approached us with a cup of tea for us to drink.