Hebron, Sansana, Sun 6.4.08, Morning

Meitar - Sansana terminal  06:50
Hundreds of men receive us with: “we’ve been here since 4 am”; "an hour ago it was even worse –someone got trampled on”. Terrible crowding, irritation. We measure the pace of advance –every 5 minutes the turnstile opens and some 30 men push through sometimes two abreast. “why do they open the terminal only at 4:45?" “if they had let us through from the beginning at this rate –the queue would have been finished by now”, “They keep on bringing new people who work slowly before they learn the ropes”.
The manager of the terminal on behalf of the Defense Ministry,  Shlomi, keeps his promise to explain procedures to us. We go round to the Israeli side to meet  him, another employee from the ministry and one from the security firm “Sheleg Lavan” (White Snow). We were told the following:
1) On a normal day some 600 men pass through but on Sundays the number rises to 1500. This includes men with permits to sleep over in Israel- hence the pressure on Sundays. The moment that Tarkumia terminal starts to be run by civilians –individual checking will begin there too; this will slow the process down there and the pressure here will increase. At the moment two checking points in the terminal are operating. An extra two have been built but they are not working yet because the necessary electronic equipment is lacking.
2) They did open the terminal at 04:00 am for a trial period but found that there was no pressure until 05:30: we decided to come at 04:00 to find out what really goes on (and when) on the crowded Sundays.
3) At first there were indeed problems about taking food through the terminal –until the workers learned the procedures. As  for tools- the regulations forbid it –but if someone wants to take a tool through and leave it at his workplace in Israel , this is arranged for him.
4)  The men who sell food  near the WC on the Palestinian side are now responsible for keeping it clean. Shlomi had himself cleaned out the piles of shit  that had accumulated on the floor there, even though this was the job of the Civilian Administration. They hadn’t done anything and so Shlomi did it himself. We had checked and found one clean toilet bowl and one broken (and shit- choked) one. Shlomi promised he would  deal with the broken toilet bowl   When prisoners’ families go through the women’s WC is opened.

Hebron 8:40

On the ascent to Tel Romeida the usual surreal scenes  are observed:  the milkman leading a  donkey carrying enormous milk cans , two merchants with gigantic loads on a hand cart which has to be pushed up the steep ascent. We remind ourselves that this is an improvement- it is now permitted to bring hand carts through the Tarpat CP and it is no longer necessary, as it had been before, to carry loads on one’s back.

8: 46 - CP at the foot of the Patriarchs’ Cave : three detainees, they say they were detained half an hour ago-after they had already been detained and their IDs had been checked at two other CPs on the other side of the square. They say that  they live in the area and come through this CP every day on their way to work and that the soldiers know them and are detaining them for no reason beyond a whim. The BP soldiers are waiting for an answer to their query about the detainees. A woman soldier from the BP arrives and shouts at us rudely : “I am not interested in making their life easier!” They were released at 9:02
Suddenly, our ears are assaulted by an appalling noise from the loudspeakers on the roof of the building where settlers sell food, drink  and souvenirs: “ Hebron is ours by ancestral right, Hebron belongs to the Jewish people, my Hebron, holy Hebron was given to the Jewish people by God”. The Palestinian shopkeepers opposite say that this racket torments them from morning till late evening. E reports that when in the past, the Palestinians had complained to the police, the police had ordered the settlers to lower the volume but to no avail. I am dressed like a normative religious person and we decide that I should enter the building to find out what’s going on.
The man at the coffee bar claims that the music comes form “the Braslavers upstairs”.Upstairs I found a hall prepared for some celebration and the man in the kitchen says: “the music is ours”. Asked to lower the volume , he sent me down to the souvenir shop. There I was shown the CD being used “The song of songs for Hebron” a miscellany by different singers. As for the volume –it is after all the responsibility of the coffee bar and the souvenir man went over and reduced the volume.
On leaving the building the penny dropped and the settlers realized that it was not a matter of a pious passerby who supported them making a legitimate request – but of two enemies of Israel .The man from the kitchen above comes down and turns in a twinkling into a thug, identifying himself as Ofer Okhana, pushes a video camera into my face and claims he has a press card. He curses us using the most appalling language and when I point out he is supposed to be religious he takes off his skullcap and sticks it into his pocket. He then carries on –asking the youths who are beginning to crowd around us to pray for our death. The man from the coffee bar joins him and starts screaming: “traitors: etc." “I was in the army for 4 years and I know that you undermine Israel’s security”. Other passers by join the crowd and curse us too. The border police from the CP watch all this and do nothing.
E suggests that we leave at once but I prefer to call the police. A brave policeman arrives at 9:39 and he too is attacked with curses and threats as well as being pushed. A police car arrives and two policemen get out – one of them holds a video camera and starts filming - this is the only thing that deters the thugs who try to get out of the frame. An elderly American informs us that "there have always been whores”; a lad suggests that my son should marry an Arab woman; a man with a large white skull cap is physically uncontrollable and resists the police; he and the first two thugs continue screaming and cursing and threaten: “when we come to power we’ll hang you on a tree like Haman“; You are humiliating us in front of the Palestinians (because we had called the police); “ your family is ashamed of you“.
The usual solution of the BP is to remove us –not, of course, the disturbers of the public peace - to the nearest police point in order to lay a complaint.
The first- heroic- policeman, angry and insulted, also made a complaint: about interference with a policeman doing his job. He asked us to go up to the main police station to lay a formal complaint. En route there a reporter from Kol Yisrael (Israel Broadcasting) calls me – he had apparently been alerted by Ofer Okhana. I tell him what happened and the report is broadcast at once – and entirely from our point of view! At the station we give details separately and Hagit directs us by phone to pass on the fact of the complaint to our lawyers for follow ups.
After completing the complaint the interrogator (a woman) tells us that she gets letters from the settlers addressed to “Ms Eichmann”- because she writes down complaints against the settlers. Her accent suggests she is the child of Holocaust survivors (this guess is confirmed by her). The police have often had to provide her with round the clock security.
Incidentally, while waiting at the station we met an Israeli Arab who had come to the Israeli police to lay a complaint against people from the Palestinian authority. He claimed that they had taken from him thousands of shekels in cash which he had had on him. Very upset.-another surreal event from life under the conquest  in a day full of events