Morning

At Tantur this morning, about 10-15 men detained. They had apparently passed through the precincts of the ecumenical institute, hoping to be able to pass into the city from there unnoticed. After two days of closure and many before that, the first day of "open" borders meant a chance to earn some money, finally. Yet these guys had bad luck. We approached the soldiers and asked them what was happening, but they were just hostile. At Tantur corner meanwhile were an additional 20-25 men of all ages. The Druze BP commanding officer, was very civil. He explained that without a permit he couldn't let anyone through. He was sympathetic to the plight of the poor guys, who were just looking for a job, and told us he would let anyone go if only possible from his point of view. We felt we wanted to wait until the men had at least received their ID's back. One had a valid permit and was allowed to go, the others were ordered to go to the roadblock and get a temporary permit, if they could prove they had a place to work. Some people with permits for other crossing points, such as Maale Adumim, were told to go back there from the "inside" and cross there. They pleaded to let them through just this once, but were refused. As they were all being sent back, one of the them said that because of our presence the BP were polite and matter-of-fact. When we are not around, he said, it was not the same. Meanwhile the guys who had been sent back were sitting in the shade on the Bethlehem side of the roadblock, where we couldn't reach them. By this time the checkpoint was a lot busier than earlier but the soldiers were not in a hurry, so a line of cars was waiting on the Jerusalem side, a few cars on the Bethlehem side and a few dozen people in that line, passing through slowly.