Afternoon

Surda and Qalandiya checkpoints Thursday afternoon, 1/1/04 MachsomWatch Observers: Batia S., Lemor Y., Leah N., Tami B. First, we went to Surda, to check on the situation there after Shweki (the commander) announced last week at Qalandiya that "there is supervision there, just like here." However, we heard over and over that the checkpoint was open. In fact, the Surda checkpoint was totally open. There are still piles of dirt there. We continued with Ali, the taxi driver, in retracing the standard travel route which is available to pedestrians at Qalandiya without a passage permit (who are told to "go through Surda"). It took us exactly one hour from Qalandiya and back with a huge bypass, and this in a taxi which was already waiting for us and sped down the road, without the encumbrance of baggage, no children on our arms nor having to wait to catch a taxi-van. That is, approximately 1 1/2 hours (+ 25 NIS) for Palestinians to Jabba/Qalandiya and another 1 1/2 hours from there in the direction of Bethlehem or Hebron.Afterwards, the soldiers at the CP explained politely to those refused entry, how they could easily reach A-Ram, for example, a distance of 100 meters from there, through Surdah. They have no idea what they are talking about. And, in any case, they are "just following orders". 15:00, Qalandiya South checkpoint :Clogged up as usual. The peddlers are still absent. Qalandiya North checkpoint:The peddlers here complained that they were being pushed in the direction of the Fence. Shadi explained that that is in order to allow the jeeps to move forward.On the runway of the nearby airport, confiscated vehicles are parked. There were more [commercial] vans than last week and also a huge tow truck, a tractor and several private cars.There was a unit of Military Police along with Shadi, the MP, who was sitting at the checkpoint. He told us that from now on he and his assistant, Uriel, would be taking turns all hours of the day at the CP itself. This is something new, but it didn't exactly prove itself effective today. By a not accidental combination with his empathetic language, he showed quite a bit of stubbornness and almost didn't allow passage in any case which was not exactly by the book.Not for several families with small children who asked to pass through for a visit, not for a young woman who asked to visit her sister at A-Ram, not for a group of exhausted workers at the end of a day's work, and especially not for a woman from Michmas (a few minutes northeast of the CP) whose little girl didn't stop sobbing in a heartbreaking way, refusing to come close, traumatized by the sight of the soldiers and, perhaps no less, by the sight of her mother who was yelling at them. And for the icing on the cake: IDF soldier, "Those [MachsomWatch] women play up to the Palestinians...[street term for performing a sex act] them". A female soldier, "What??" Soldier, "Never mind, just kidding!" Conclusion: some limit of disgust was reached that perhaps could be worked with somehow.