Afternoon

Qalandiya checkpoint, Monday afternoon, 5 Jan 2004.At the entrance to the Qalandiya checkpoint there is a single peddler, selling sweaters. He tells us that a soldier has threatened him: if he doesn't pack up and move, "We will take care of you." The checkpoint is staffed by the Military Police. (No IDF reservist volunteers at all!) Most of the soldiers are women. The assistant commander (female) of the checkpoint speaks Arabic. The women soldiers behaved in a particularly unresponsive manner: they pushed, threatened, and screamed all of the time. "Ruh men hon!" ["Get out of here!" in Arabic], and weren't ready to listen to anything. The assistant, as she called herself, was more patient.There was a long queue of pedestrians moving along relatively quickly. Many women with small children are standing in the bitter cold. There was a case of a Bedouin woman with 2 children, one about 4 and an older girl, carrying a lot of packages, heavier than herself. The mother only speaks Arabic, and holds the little boy in her arms, explains, and we understand, that he is sick.The woman soldier standing outside the checkpoint barrier stops the woman, hears her out, then tells her, "Ruh men hon!" I tried to talk with the soldier and she agreed to ask her, not for a permit but just for an ID -- but the woman didn't have an ID either. So the soldier turned to me and said, No permit, no ID, how can you ask me to let her through? I explained to her how I understood that she should indeed let her through. The soldier turned again to the woman and asked her again, "No ID? Maybe a driver's license?" Since she didn't have a driver's license, the soldier started to push her in the direction of "New Jersey" [the waist-high roadside barriers]. At this point, I went to the assistant commander and, after some consultation, we managed to persuade the soldier to let her through. We had a few other small successes. The vendors on the other side of the "New Jersey" barrier complain bitterly that the soldiers had already "visited" them a few times today and knocked over their stands, breaking some dishes that one of them was selling.At a certain point we heard the sound of gunfire from the direction of Atarot. All the soldiers put on helmets, and closed the passage of pedestrians and vehicles through the checkpoint.Some of the soldiers ran in the direction of the shooting, particularly the women soldiers (who seemed delighted at the opportunity?). Then, after a short while, they returned and the incident was over.(We checked and it seemed that nothing had happened, perhaps not even shots). A-Ram checkpoint:A very long line of cars in both directions. We stood in the pedestrian queue which was moving quickly. The system of waiting on the white line seems to create a longer queue than previously. A jeep of the Border Police stopped a car with an Israeli license plate. The driver was a Jerusalemite bringing a couple of Jerusalem residents along with someone from the Territories whose identity was not know to the driver, who also didn't realize that the man was from the Territories. The BP arrested the Palestinian and took the car and driver. (From a telephone call to the driver later in the evening, we were told that the car was confiscated for a month, to be held at Atarot, and he would perhaps have to stand trial when the car is released).