6:30 we start out by going to
Sheikh Saed. The place seems more fortified each time we go there. We apparently plan to turn this also into a permanent barrier. On our way down we saw many many children of all ages coming up the hill of Jebel Mukaber, and little action at the C.P
Few workers with permits and one or two women with bags of olives they had just picked on the other side where their olive groves are. One of the women was stopped despite the fact she was carrying a blue I.D. card. When we tried to intervine on her behalf we were told that she can pass but without the two bags of olives since she had already transfered two or three bags today and the Palestiniens are not aloud to bring into Israel COMERCIAL quantities. of olives. She waited. we argued, in the end a Jeep with a B.P. officer came by, and he told us they are aloud 40kg. a day.
She was aloud to go through.
The woman , in her fourties, was carrying these very heavy bags in order to be able to take them to the press today. She told us she used to have 160 olive trees and 60 lemon trees but that the fence and security road and another road along it were built on her grove and that now all she has left are ten olive trees and six lemon trees. She picked it all in a few days and is now trying to get it over here to make her oil. But even in that she is being harassed.
So whoever goes to a C.P. where olives are being brought in remember they can take at least 40 kg a day into Israel.....
We continued to Zeitun. There we try to always talk to the drivers on either side of the C.P. We were told that most of the time there is one open counter, only in the early morning two, but not all three. The DCO opens between 8:30 and 9 and it can go fast or take hours to get through.
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Wadi Na'ar,
fast moving taxies and cars, few are stopped but only for 5 min. and then let to continue. There was an older B/P. man running the show and he was correct efficient and quick.
