Afternoon

At 3pm the road leading to the wall was closed, apparently because of Passover. The only way to get to Abu Dis was through Maale Adumim. It was quiet, no soldiers around, perhaps due to the imposed closure.Sawahre: We joined a long line of cars for a while. The people told us that they had been there for about two hours. The line in the opposite direction was even longer. In front of us was an ambulance that didn't have its lights on. A few minuets later another ambulance approached behind with lights flashing. We ran and told the soldier, who immediately directed the traffic, inspected the ambulance and let it pass. He also let the other ambulance through. Then the inspection again came to a stand still. As we stood there, another soldier, who had the air of authority, came up to shake our hands and ask how we are. He apologized for not having a cup of coffee to offer us, we believe sarcastically. We hung around and asked the soldiers why they weren't letting the cars through. They made some excuses. Now and again, they checked a car superficially, but mostly they didn't do anything. After a while, the commander, Almog, shouted at us to speak only to him and not to the other soldiers. He repeated over and over that traffic was slow because they were being so thorough... In fact, they mostly did nothing: the soldiers sat on their jeep and Almog ran around yelling at people. Many Palestinians, with blue and orange identity cards, approached him and begged to be let through, but he just told them to go back to their place in line. There was an old man with papers showing that he needed to get to the hospital by 6 that evening, lots of trucks and many private cars and taxis. At one point, a number of younger looking men who had been in a taxi were detained. One of them said: "I know you women, you help. Why don't you call somebody? There are lots of things I could tell you but it's dangerous for me to do so now". A few cars were then checked, but the process again came to a standstill. Although he actually returned the call, there was no improvement in the situationby the time we left, one and half hour later.