Afternoon

Memorial Day. 3:45pm, no border police or soldiers. People standing around told us that there was a closure in the morning and the border police were there until about noon. Several people reported that a young man had been severely beaten and taken away in a jeep. Down the hill was a horrible scene. Masses of people were trying to cross over concrete blocks nearly two meters high. A second wall had been erected parallel to the old wall, and to get from one to the other, one had to leap almost a meter. Suddenly, the border police stopped all passage, and people had to either hike up the hill to the iron gate, or try to get themselves over the wall about 20 meters away. While all this was going on, two huge bulldozers which were in the area started driving into the old wall in order to move the concrete barriers. People continued trying to cross through, and every few minutes the rules changed. First they were allowed, then forbidden, then allowed, then forbidden. The border police who were stationed there seemed to find the whole situation amusing. We asked about the young man who was beaten and were told that he was taken away in a Border Police jeep. The BPs said that he had "attacked the border police and was put under arrest". We later learned that he had been released shortly after attival at the police station, which casts some doubt on this story. It should be noted that not once, in the two hours that we were there, did the soldiers check a document or a bag of the thousands of Palestinians who were climbing over the walls. So much for security concerns!! The entire procedure seemed designed to make the lives of the people there as miserable and humiliating as possible. As we were about to leave, a cement mixer entered the area, apparently to seal the entire area so that passage will be virtually impossible. Also, one of the jeeps had a cargo of barbed wire which will probably become part of the new wall.