Morning

This is only a short message to report about our detention this morning at Bethlehem checkpoint and subsequent 'interrogation' at Oz police station - all in all lasting from 7.15 AM until 2.40 PM. Summary: Our IDs were confiscated by a border police policeman and officer less than 10 minutes after our arrival ar the checkpoint. This was in response to our refusal to obey the border-police officer's order to leave the checkpoint (they said we could "watch" from far away, that is from outside the checkpoint), claiming that we are disturbing the work of the policemen. We were held for approximately 2 hours at the checkpoint itself and told that we would be released by regular (blue) police. A policeman arrived at the scene at around 9 AM, but instead of returning our IDs he decided to take us and the two border policemen (policeman and officer) to Oz station (near Jebal Mukaber). At Oz we were made to wait for 2.5 more hours until the border policemen filed their complaint against us. Then at arround 12.00 began our interrogations (during which we filed complaints against the border policemen), which lasted until 14.00 and were followed later by our being fingerprinted. We were finally allowed to leave the station at 14.40. At the 12.00 news broadcast of Kol Israel, there was an item saying that three activists were detained at checkpoint 300 after they had incited Palestinians against the security forces, and called the latter Fascists. Chiko Menashe, the reporter of Reshet B, told me on the phone that the source of this news item was the spokesman of the police. I provided him with full detail of the event and of our activities, which should have appeared on the news. (and later did).