'Azzun 'Atma, Sun 6.12.09, Morning

 'Azzun 'Atma

08:30
      How depressing! About 30-40 people are still crowded into the line to cross.  Five smug soldiers face them.  We talk with laborers who came through and are waiting for their rides to work.  They paint a depressing portrait:  for two weeks, since the new group of soldiers arrived (a rescue unit from the Home Front command), they’re being treated arbitrarily, abused (“like animals").

The contractor doesn’t want a worker who can start only at 10:00.  Some of the laborers already waited on line at the eastern entrance to the village (“down there”), only to wait again at this exit.

 They describe the behavior of the soldiers at the entrance to the village, their humiliating treatment of women who are forced to crowd together in line with dozens of men, their crudeness. One man said they should change the name of the crossing to “the gate of death” (someone told us about a funeral in the village on Saturday, when people coming from elsewhere had trouble getting into the village). 

Another man, despairing, who works in a factory, says that it should begin operating at 06:30, but doesn’t open until he arrives.  “But this can’t go on.  It has to end,” he says. 

Someone else bitterly tells us about the room with the scanner, which they believe causes cancer, and describes how many people have gotten cancer as a result.  Even though this belief is probably baseless, isn’t there any way or need to reassure the Palestinians about this issue? 

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