Afternoon

T.B., B.S., L. Bar-N., N.G. Two women, a younger woman and her elderly mother were waiting there. They had gone earlier that day to Makasada? Hospital and the younger woman had left her id with the MK as surety for their return. He had told them to be back in an hour but they had been detained and when they returned at 12 o’clock the soldiers disclaimed any knowledge of the id and although they phoned the MK he denied according to what they told us that he had ever taken it. Batya searched the budka herself looking for it. After many phone calls both from the soldiers and from us the MK suddenly found that he did have the id but it took more calls before he actually returned it. He started literally to scream at the woman “to educate her” but she gave him as good as he got. The fact that he had gone off with the id in his pocket did not seem to bother him. The atmosphere at Qalandiya was most unpleasant. It is hard to describe it…..a casual brutality and boorishness it the closest one can come to it with un underlying threat of violence both in the shouts of “Yirga Yirga” and the body language of the soldier including physical pushing of people who tried to approach to plead their cause and a young woman soldier pushing back an elderly woman while Shimon hovered over them threatenting to push her himself. But he had the sense not to carry out this threat. Amir in charge of the checkpoint in the beginning refused to talk to us and ordered the soldiers also to have no dealings with us. At one stage though he had a civil conversation with us and wanted to know if it was one of us who had appeared on the program with Lapid. Here also we were told by a man that his id had been confiscated as he had been caught in the Tora Bora and this at 10am. Once again we were told that they did not have id’s but this was found in a box after they saw us speaking to him. Ovad, a reservist? Volunteer? at any rate a tall older man did more than his share of adding to this atmosphere. He also kept ordering us to move back and to “stand in the corner”. At one stage one of the soldiers threatened to call the police and have us arrested ….. and actually went off to do so….as they claimed that we were causing a “gathering” even though we were well away from the checkpoint itself. Ovad also threatened to close the checkpost unless we carried out his commands. There also seemed to be a definite effort to frighten people who were talking to us. One man whose permit (tashrich) had terminated yesterday had it confiscated and when he asked us to help him get it back he was threatened by the soldier who had taken it from him that unless he stopped speaking to us, he , the soldier, would make his life much harder. An older woman was talking to Natanya….. she said that she had displaced discs in her back and found it very hard to stand in line for hours. She also asked if we really thought we could help them but accepted that at least we did try to do something and also that we reported what we saw. Although not standing outside the area of the checkpost they were approached by another soldier demanding to know what the conversation was about and although the woman had obviously already passed through the checkpoint and was on her way to A-Ram he demanded to see her id again and check it thoroughly. Natanya apologized for having caused her more trouble. A soldier approached a four year old boy who was waving a stick around, grabbed it and through it away claiming that the child was trying to hit someone. He left behind a thoroughly frightened little boy. Surprisingly enough Shimon who in the beginning was very jeering and loutish in his behaviour changed towards the end of the shift…. We left at 6 pm …and actually helped in some cases to let people go through. Just a gentle reminder….when one goes to Ram at 3 the sun may be warm but once it goes down it is bitterly cold there and jackets and gloves should be taken.