'Anin, Reihan, Shaked, Mon 19.11.07, Morning

06:00 - 09:10

06:00 Aanin Checkpoint

People coming out of the checkpoint in the direction of the Seam Zone tell us that a hundred are waiting below at the entrance.

Today they are not listing ID numbers, and everyone is content.

People are coming out with yellow (16 litre) oil containers. A tractor and a donkey also cross.

N. waits with his young son who does not yet have an ID, so can’t pass the checkpoint by himself. The boy went to school and returned. They are waiting for the mother to come and collect the child from the checkpoint. N. is very pressured. He is hurrying to work, and they are waiting for him, but he fears leaving the child unsupervised facing the soldiers. Finally he goes, and keeps looking back.

07:00 – the soldiers continue to pass people. Less than 20 are now waiting below.

N.’s wife arrives, gives us biscuits in honour of the last birth. As the last people pass from Aanin, she enters and returns with the child to the village.

07:10 Shaked Checkpoint

On the West Bank side some 20 people are waiting. From the Seam Zone, mostly teachers and schoolchildren. Taxis arrive, the passengers alight, the driver advances to vehicle inspection and the passengers are called to get in.

The schoolchildren approach the soldiers with open satchels.

Transit is slow and involved.

They tell us that in the hut there is only one soldier checking both directions and listing.

Children from the lone house, on their way to school, arrive on a cart harnessed to a donkey.

A youngster with an illegible permit is delayed for a check with the DCO. After 20 minutes, his father arrives and the boy is passed through, while the father returns home to Hirbet Radia. He is bitter, tells about old promises to link electricity to Hirbet Radia, Dahar el-Malch and Um el Reihan. Nothing. DCO Head Fares jokingly promised: "till we leave you will have electricity" and the man understands that there is little chance of it happening soon. Shaked was linked from the first days, he says angrily. We were here before them. Shaked gets water from a six and a half inch pipe, while we get from a two inch pipe. They have a few score people – we have a thousand. It’s not enough that they have surrounded us with a fence, like animals in a cage, and they open the gate for us twice a day, but they also don’t give us electricity or water...

08:10 - 09:10 Reihan Checkpoint

Eleven loaded pick up trucks are waiting for routine inspection, as are a number of cars. At the checkpoint four vehicles (pick ups and cars) are being checked together, with dogs.

In the closed inspection compound the pick ups are being offloaded with a fork lift. A dog sniffs at the produce (food!) And a soldier checks with the dog. Each vehicle is checked for half an hour outside the compound and another half hour inside.

After poking into personal possessions, asking personal questions, checking them against the occupation authorities, x-raying and magnometering them, they proceed down a net sleeve, behind a concrete wall that hides them (from whom?), beyond which a well tended and irrigated garden has appeared, on their land – that which was grabbed from them – and an Israeli flag floats over it all.