'Anata, Qalandiya, Tue 26.2.08, Afternoon

We went first to Anata and were amazed at the hoards of
children who were returning from school.
There must have been upward of 1000.
The checkpoint was very well manned – we spotted six personnel, made up
of private security people and military police.
There was no back up of traffic in either direction and a lot of
pedestrian traffic as well. In fact
there was so much traffic going through that many pedestrians just walked out
of the village with no check. One of the
guards asked us to move back. He was
courteous, but the whole thing was quite ridiculous. He said that if we stood in the checkpoint
area, we might be injured.

We continued on toward Qalandiya via the Hizme checkpoint,
but before the Le’el checkpoint, there was a huge line up of vehicles which
were being carefully checked. We noticed
that every vehicle heading that way had green plates and then saw the sign
forbidding Israelis to cross through.
Since we are unfamiliar with this route, we decided to turn around
before the checkpoint because we were quite certain that we would not be
allowed through.

We went down to Azariah and there too, we saw a recently set
up sign saying that Israelis were not allowed in, but there, there were dozens
of cars with Israeli plates and no checkpoint and we continued in. Traffic was vibrant and there were no
incidents.