Abu-Dis

The gate was open, people
moving feely in and out, two BP asking for IDs at random, peeking
superficially and sending people on. All seemed loose and lax. The
taxi drivers said that every morning (or maybe every now and then,
we couldn't quite understand) between 6am and 9am (time description
varied somewhat) the gate is closed, and no one is allowed through.
This happened unfortunately on the first day of school, so many
children couldn't get to school. Between the gate and the hotel,
people were jumping over the wall or squeezing through, unhindered.
The guards of the hotel showed us the smashed part of the hotel's
gate and the crushed and damaged the pipes of the sewer system, in
other words: no bathroom facilities since. We drove down the dirt
path (apparently made by the bulldozers) to see a now chalky
terrain devoid of many (we were told hundreds) of its olive trees,
recently uprooted, sprawling as far as the eye could see. A clear
route for the coming wall had been marked. From afar, we could see
the bulldozers gnawing the land ceaselessly. T.B. confirmed the
guards' story that two days, before the army offered the hotel a
choice: either sell them or rent them this hotel for a border
police base. He has no other option. The owner refused both
'offers' (Danny Rubinstein says that for a Palestinian today, these
are not real options). Back at the gate were many detainees, caught
randomly, some stopped coming towards Jerusalem, others coming out.
Their IDs were checked through the system then slowly returned.

Sawahre: We saw three kittens, and two soldiers, one reading the
paper another cracking open sunflower seeds while casually stopping
cars, allowing them through both ways. Now and then one passenger
might be chosen and asked to step out, his ID then handed over to a
third soldier suddenly appearing from the tower, adding them to
others whose ID numbers had supposedly been passed through the
system, and the soldiers were waiting for the answer. The common
factor of these chosen ones was their age (20+). Two Palestinian
transits and some more random victims were waiting, they said for
about an hour. One fragile looking man from Abu Dis' municipality
workers seemed worried. He said that they have always had an
understanding... that they always pass unhindered.... that they
clean the soldiers' base too... 'Do they pay you?'. 'Well the truth
is they don't'... Soon after they were freed to go. It was almost
20:00, after nightfall, when all the IDs were given back, and we
even got a free ride back to Abu Dis with one of the released
transits.