Morning

Arrival: 9:20 Palestinian time Downtown East Jerusalem: Large numbers of police and barriers were blocking movement in the direction of the Temple Mount made it impossible to take our usual route to Abu Dis, forcing us instead to go on the Ma'aleh Adumim road and approach the Abu Dis wall via Al-Azariyye.The first person we talked to was a transit driver who told us that the BP had been using gas in the morning and that an old woman had been beaten.At the time we arrived, the wall was being fortified with additional concrete barricades and heaps of foul smelling garbage.In the open space opposite the gas station, there were quite a lot of people trying to get to Jerusalem, but not a soul was allowed through. On the radio, it had been announced early in the morning that people 45 of age and above holding Jerusalem IDs were allowed in, but when we mentioned this to the checkpoint commander, all he said was "I don't take my orders from the radio . Nobody is passing. There is a curfew !" Even a French woman who lives in Al-Azariyye wasn't allowed through to Jerusalem.Not wishing to put up with this, we called Jad'an Safadi, who wasn't immediately available but responded to our questions about 40 minutes later. We saw the commander receiving his call, but only after some procrastination was it announced that people aged 55 and above were allowed to pass. With everyone knowing with what frequency orders can be changed, immediately, a massive rush towards the wall started. We regretted not being able to film the scene of scores of elderly people climbing over the wall, right next to a huge pile of rather smelly garbage, as an Arabic speaking soldier was looking on and cracking jokes. It took two more phone calls to Safadi and a personal conversation of Y with the checkpoint commander to finally reduce the maximum age from 55 to 50 to 45. While some people were actually allowed in and others assembled in the open space, suddenly and for no obvious reason, both smoke and sound grenades were thrown at those hoping to get lucky. It is important to stress that while a feeling of frustration was discernible as people were trying relentlessly to get to the other side, there were no signs of a dangerous buildup of tension or aggression among those waiting for their turn. Nor was there an unmanageably huge crowd. We were stunned to learn, upon our question as to why there was any need to make use of such means, the reason for this behaviour - "That's to make them calm down". Both kinds of grenades were used intermittently throughout our shift. When we went up to the mosque area, a bulldozer was in the process of adding huge concrete barricades to the already massive blockade just beneath the entrance to the College. Later on, we were asked into the home of a family living in one of the houses on the street leading up to the wall. A young father of five felt great urgency to show us in what dismal shape his pregnant (7th month) wife is after being forced on a daily basis to inhale tear (and other kinds of) gas from the nearby wall. To make things worse, she is a Jordanian national and has no ID that would allow her to get to Al-Moqassad Hospital. Contact with Physicians for Human Rights has been established. Hopefully they'll be able to help. His own freedom of movement has also been severely curtailed by the fact that his blue ID was taken from him after his Jerusalemite first wife separated from him. Watching the situation at the wall all day from his window, he simply can't picture himself undergoing the humiliation at the hands of the Border Police. All he wants, he says, is to be able to accompany his kids on their way to school.