Bethlehem

6:30 AM: Some seven Palestinians held
up beneath the gates of Tantur. Before we even got close, five BP's
informed us that we were disturbing them in their work, and that we
had to move to the other side of the road. One of them, fresh from
a 4 months course, accompanied us (and held up traffic). He said
Tantur was a closed military area, since there were specific
warnings re that spot.

Etzion: A new group of reservists had just arrived who were
unfamiliar with us. They were extremely friendly. They seemed
polite to those passengers who had to disembark from the one bus on
the spot until they were checked and allowed to continue. No one
was held up and the traffic flow was fast. They read with great
interest our Letter to the Soldier and kept it to show it to the
others.

Beit Tsafafa, 7:30AM: About twenty men had been 'caught'. They were
told to stand on the sunny side of the road. When the soldiers
spotted us they marched the entire group around the corner and the
Tantur Compound. We saw them later from Checkpoint 300. They were
sitting on the sidewalk of the Bethlehem side of the checkpoint,
out of our reach.

Tantur: Only one woman who apparently cleans houses in Malcha, has
eight children and an unemployed husband. When we tried to
intervene, the five soldiers again claimed that we were disturbing
their work. On the shady side of the road a soldier was processing
the ID's of some twelve newly caught Palestinians, but they were
allowed to sit down and he seemed to work faster. Back at
Checkpoint 300 the 'illegal' workers had been sent home and we gave
lift to a couple of young women who were most appreciative of our
work. One teaches Greek in a school near New Gate and was late for
school. They had had to wait for more than an hour and a half to
pass the checkpoint. Whereas for cars there were two lanes today,
only one soldier was in charge of checking both the incoming and
outgoing Palestinian pedestrians. One of the others worked as an
accountant at the Ambassador Hotel and had taken Hebrew during her
studies at Bir Zeit University. She said that the Moked had helped
her when she wanted to register her son in her blue ID (her husband
was from the West Bank). She had actually succeeded.