Morning

Arriving at the wall at 6:45am, there was one BP patrol on foot before the transit station, checking id's and instructing everyone without a permit to go back to Abu Dis. Some of the men were held up over an hour for questioning. Although the BP can stop people for up to 3 hours, we called Safadi anyway. We don't know if this helped, but soon the ID's were returned and the man went back to Abu dis.At 7:00am the BP's were standing by the wall, not checking anybody, but at about 7:30 they climbed up the wall and started checking all IDs in both directions. By 8:00, when many students arrived ,it was very crowded. The BP's seemed stressed,because there were too many people. We were told that yesterday a gas grenade had been thrown into this crowd. We talked on the phone with the DCO commander, Ran Kravitz, who said there was a gate open on the top of the hill, towards Mt. Olives, everyday between 5:00-9:00 am. No one seemed to know about it, as it is too far up the hill.