including Anata

Anata, Qalandiya, Thursday, 20/1/2005, AM Id el-Adha (the Feast of the Sacrifice)Observers: Ruth E., Aviva W., Rama Y. (reporting)Anata. A cold morning. When we arrived, at around06:40, there were many pedestrians in their bestclothes hurrying to Jerusalem. There was a feeling ofholiday in the air in spite of the depressing settingof the CP. The soldiers checked and let them passquickly. There were five detainees. One of them managed to tellus that he had been there already for thirty minutes.The soldiers then told us to step back and not to talkto the detainees. They consented, though, to explainthat the detainees didn't have the necessary permits.It took us some time to realize that the five werestanding there just for the sake of standing there,and no one bothered about them. It was freezing cold. We made several calls (and got no answer), and someaction started around the detainees. It was about07:30. One by one, they had to enter a small shackwith a soldier, apparently, for physical checking. Atthe same time, a table was put under the shed acrossthe road, and a female soldier sat there. After beingchecked at the shack, they had to cross the road tothe improvised office, where the female soldier filledout meticulously some forms. We looked carefully tosee whether the Palestinians had to sign the form.They did. We presumed that once this procedurefinished, their IDs would be returned to them, andthey'd be released. Not so. This time we called BPoperations and got an answer. A Moti spoke to us in astrange imitation of an official of the IDFspokesperson office: We have to wait for the"peripheral checking" (?) to be completed.Restrictions have been alleviated because of theholiday. There are reasons for those Palestinians tobe detained that you cannot know about. Call me againin 15 minutes if they are not released, and I'll seewhat can be done. Some minutes after 08:00 the lastdetainee signed the forms, and they were all released.Ruthi had the brilliant idea to call the prattlingMoti and tell him that the five were released. Therewas no Moti at BP operations. The whole conversationwas just some joke of a bored clerk-soldier.We drove through Ar-Ram but didn't stop there. Therewere almost no pedestrians and very few cars.Qalandiya CP was almost deserted too.