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Jan-27-2004
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Anata/Qalandiya, Tuesday morning, 27.1.04 Ruthie E-R, Rachel O (reporting) Anata : There is continuous movement at the checkpoint, no detaineesinfo-icon. We moved on to Qalandiya. Qalandiya: When we arrived at 6:45, the situation at the checkpoint seemed problematic: crowded lines of people waiting, tense atmosphere, rain, strong wind and bitter cold. The regular stations were not staffed because of the sea of mud around the hut there. Instead, soldiers were checking permits in different places among the people waiting. This created a threatening bottleneck around each soldier of people being shoved and shouting. The soldiers are not effective and tried to get control of the pressures by shouting, also at us to get farther away. In brief, a proven recipe for loss of control. After half an hour of this, the checkpoint commander called for Major Fares from the DCO [IDF Civilian Administration office] at Beit El. We saw that Fares quickly took action: he staffed the checking points and got the people through -- so that after about twenty minutes the pressure was lessened and the lines were shortened. In answer to our question, he said that he would soon be available to talk with us, and in fact it was explained to us that this was the first day of this Unit here, the checkpoint had been opened late, the difficult weather made it worse, and the soldiers simply couldn't get control of the situation, so they finally called him in. We estimated that during the time we spent there, one would have been standing in line for about an hour in the wind and rain before succeeding to go through. Allow me an observation: the general picture as it was today at the checkpoint of Qalandiya was that of young, scared soldiers, directing their weapons indiscriminately at a crowd which was shoving and craven, even more scared than they, and all of this in the middle of nowhere. In rain and cold. I am also scared, scared of the comparisons.