Morning

We parked our car very near the checkpoint. We took a large supply of water for us and also for many people passing the checkpoint because of the heatwave.Some locals told us Saturday is a particularly difficult day because many people arrive home after a week’s absence and this creates a lot of movement.There were new soldiers at the checkpoint including ultra religious soldiers. The southern part was disorganized and much more problematic than the northern part, where soldiers were able to keep order. At the southern side, from time to time huge crowds gathered and people in need, unable to bypass the crowd of men, were forced to go up and down a difficult slope. A hysterical Russian accented sergeant, was unable to handle the situation. Upon our arrival, we started to press him to let women and children pass, but his response was negative. Our presence created additional disorder, because soldiers became less strict and the crowd became even more chaotic creating a disadvantageous situation for people in need. We started to call around. We called Ofer,the assistant commander and we woke him up, and also called the DCO and IDF humanitarian help. Suddenly women, people with children and the old were allowed to pass and the situation improved for some time. The Russian-accented soldier was moved to other positions, and until he returned the situation was better. When he returned, he again created the above problem, so two of us went North and complained about him. A DCO officer appeared and some improvement was achieved again. Many people asked for our help. For some moments, we created the erroneous impression that we are powerful women and we created false expectations. Our real force was our ability to help many people in need. The problem was not only the soldiers who were unable to recognize when a person needs special attention, but also Palestinians who were not particularly altruistic towards these weaker people. The terrible hamsin increased the tension. (We must request from the army to supply water for those passing by.) We called Habib from Physicians for Human Rights - he was very responsive and he managed to negotiate help for two cases. Ambulances passed slowly at the beginning, but our pressure forced soldiers to be more efficient and one soldier particularly went out of his way to help an emergency ambulance which came racing to the checkpoint with its siren blaring. He took over for a moment from a young soldier who'd never done checkpoint duty before that day.