Qalandiya

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Place: 
Observers: 
Natanya Ginsburg, Chana Stein (reporting)
Dec-23-2018
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Morning
Quick passage – until a powercut.

05.15.  On the Israel side, a very large group at prayer.

There was hardly any line.  The first turnstile was open and people entered as soon as they arrived.  A bit later, as traffic increased, the soldier worked all three turnstiles and let in many people in at each turn.

At 6.10 a D.C.O. officer opened the humanitarian gate. He closed it and departed at about 6.45, as there was no need for it.

A man approached us to ask for help for his brother who is banned entry.  We gave him instructions for contacting Sylvia’s group. Gratifying to know that Machsomwatch is recognized as the address…

The beigel seller was absent – not ill, though, we were happy to hear from the owner of the falafel stall.. The bakery supplying his beigels is closed today. The coffee kiosk is now installed (with improvements) at the far end of the drive near the busy parking-lot.

We could not see any sign of progress in building the new extension (not from outside, at least).

We entered a cage at 6.55 and would probably have been outside within ten minutes. But, just as we joined a short line at a checking station, the lights went out.  We were stuck for 30 minutes with the line inevitably getting longer. Of course, the authorities did not make any announcement about the cause, about how long the delay was likely to last, or heaven forbid to apologise for inconvenience! We were amazed at the calm response of everyone waiting (too resigned to complain?), as opposed to us privileged Israelis. After half an hour, we phoned our angel Hanna Barag to see if she could clarify the situation, and in the middle of the conversation the lights miraculously went on!

We noticed that a few of the women had to remove their shoes and pass them through the screening machine.

We were waved through. In the end it took us 45 minutes to pass..

This happened after I had left Chana. Not everything is black at the checkpoint.

The zips of my rucksack had  broken while we were in line and in the cold and the dark I  had tried to stuff everything into a smaller pocket.. I had just got home when  realized that my wallet was not there.  The  phone rang…..what on earth did they want from me  from the swimming pool, I thought in the middle of all this.  The young woman,  Nur, at the pool  said that a man had phoned her from Ramle of all places  and said that his worker who came through Qalandiya had  picked up a wallet that morning  with over 1000 shekel in it  and brought it to him.  They  saw that there was a card for the pool in the wallet. He phoned the pool. The pool phoned me. I was speechless…for once. Needless to say I thanked and thanked both he and his worker.

I phoned Ina in Rechovot who went and picked it up and also gave the worker something from me which he was unwilling to take but she said that I had insisted. Out of despair comes hope.