Qalandiya

Ar Ram: there are regular soldiers
replacing the border police' who are on an exercise for about a
month. The soldiers are polite and some are even pleasant to the
Palestinians, but the 'follow instructions". Only blue i.d.s
go through. There was no one watching the side street when we were
there; they are there on and off. We saw a woman who was allowed
through Qalandya but not Ar Ram; the soldier explained that Ar-Ram
is stricter than the closure checkpoint of Qalandya.

At Qalandya the soldiers insist that we stand 'off the asphalt',
i.e. about 6 meters away from them, where we cannot hear what's
going on. The commander said he could send us away entirely if he
wanted to. One soldier kept raising his voice, yelling at the
Palestinians [and at us] and making a threatening face. Sometimes
the soldiers told a Palestinian without a permission to go to
Surda, i.e. to go all the way around, and that way they can get
into Jerusalem! 4 workers from the local electricity co. told us
they were fixing a problem in the electrical network when some
soldiers came, took their i.d.s, and kept the driver's i.d., so
that they are unable to repair the damage. The soldiers at the
checkpoint said they were looking into it. 2 workers from the Jenin
municipality were refused entry to go on to Ramallah. It seems that
on principle they don't want to as for permission, since it is all
Palestinian territory. They almost got into a fight with the
soldiers. Then one who was allowed through got into an argument
with a soldier at the south side of the checkpoint and was being
held up. We didn't try to interfere since it had not been a long
time yet. On the whole traffic was flowing quietly.