Afternoon

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Apr-27-2003
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There was very heavy rainfall during that whole afternoon. E-Ram was pretty quiet, with traffic flowing. Relatively short line of cars. At Qalandya, a woman volunteer was proper with the Palestinians. We saw a nicely dressed couple refused entry. The woman was very upset and said something about (school). A male nurse was also refused entry--the woman soldier simply said, "he knows that nurses are not allowed". In general, this woman soldier was pretty decent, making an effort to speak in Arabic when the person in front of her didn't speak Hebrew or English. She advised us to go home and spare ourselves the stormy weather. We saw two soldiers running down the street after a nice new jeep which they stopped. They got the two young men who were in it out of the jeep and checked their papers. The driver was left in the car and the passenger was directed back to the checkpoint. Along the way we noticed the soldier kicked him. We were told that the car had bypassed the line (or the checkpoint??), and the kicking was "to make them afraid, otherwise they don't pay attention to us". The soldier asked us why we were on the Palestinian side and said that Palestinians had shot at his brother. The passenger was put in a little metal booth "so he wouldn't get wet from the rain" while they were checking his papers. This went on about an hour, in the course of which another young man was also put in the booth, and we couldn't help.