Qalandiya, Sun 26.10.08, Morning
Avital reporting: We arrived at Anata at 6.45 to the childrens'
hour. A bus waited for them and some little ones with big rucksacks dived
through the soldiers and cars of the morning hours which are most tense. When we
came to the southern side of the checkpoint two border policemen came to us, one
of whom was a dogtrainer and began to speak to us about Machsomwatch. Why only
women, why no men and the reason. Slowly the conversation went on to political
matters with the usual questions, What would happen if there were no
checkpoints, to whom the land belongs, the effectiveness of dog trainers in
catching terrorists and drugs. But in spite of the usual reactions the
conversation was to the point with no unpleasant reactions.
We came to Wadi Nar at 8.00. The centre of the
crossroads was pretty empty and everything seemed to be makeshift. On the
temporary booth was written "The house of the governor." The eastern hill had
become a kind of an army institution. The bulldozers have disappeared for the
meantime and the whole area looks like the imaginary margins of an unfinished
building site.
When we arrived there were few cars. A driver of a van
which arrived from Bethlehem was asked to open the doors. After
some efforts a side door was opened. The car was filled with medium sized
cardboard boxes. What could the soldiers do…if they had to check everything it
would take the whole day. The car was sent on its way.
After a long traffic jam I continued to Qalandiya while
Natanya went in to the checkpoint there to see what was happening.
only left because I felt that lousy as the situation was I could not do anything. I went into Qalandiya to find 4 turnstiles open and people passing in a steady stream. At the DCO there were about 10
people waiting. I don't know if my phone call made a difference but while I was on the line people started going through slowly. Then a taxi driver came up to me and asked if I could help a woman and
her six children. I hope I got the story right. She lives in Jenin but her place of residence is listed in the ID as Gaza . Her husband was arrested and sent back to Gaza . Only later it became clear that this had happened 6 months ago. They still have a house in Jenin but she wants to be reunited with her husband. She said she no longer had any food in the house and could not support her family. I phoned Abu Rukun and he came and took her inside the DCO but afterwards came out to say that the story was very complicated and that he had told her what to do. She seemed confused. I asked her if she had gone to the Palestinian Authority but her answer was that they had taken no notice of her. I don't think she knew how to deal with those in authority. The taxi driver who is her neighbour took my number and said he would phone me if the problem was not solved. This took a while. When I was on my way out at 9.50 I saw that now only two turnstiles were open and that one was for blue IDs and that at no time were there more than about 10 people waiting and most of the time less and in the other for the green IDs was a line
of more than 50 people. I counted. I phoned the Moked and spoke to Gilad .. At this stage the situation was that the blue ID line was empty for some of the time but when people with green IDs
tried to get through the woman soldier sent them back to the end of the green line. And this even though there were no other people at that time in line. When one elderly woman asked her why the answer
she got was "ככה" She took no notice of my efforts to catch her attention. I phoned Gilad again and said this was ridiculous , he did' nt like it. Now the woman soldier seemed to try a new tactic.
She did not let anyone through for 5-10 minutes and only when there was a line of blue IDs did she let people in. In fact at one stage someone shouted to her "We are only blue IDs. Let us in." and she
shouted back "Are you sure? " and only then did she let people through again. And each time she would take of break and only when she felt that there were enough people to attract her attention did
she let them in. I phoned several times to the Moked and at 10.30 when I had to leave for personal reasons there were about 8 people in the blue ID line, 60 in the green and another 20 waiting outside.