'Anata, Qalandiya, יום ה' 8.10.09, בוקר

6.20 Qalandia

The closure of the week of Succot is noticeable, there are no lines at all in front of the external turnstiles, people just stream though, all five entrances are open, but there are lines in all of them. Only men above 30 who work in Atarot are allowed to get through, a group of about 10 men are waiting around hoping to get through even though they do not fall into the category of the lucky ones. When we stand in line to get through the turnstiles, it is stopped all of a sudden, pupils who have to get to school and other people in line have to wait for about seven minutes, no explanation of course.  We can see that there are soldiers chatting along in the post but they do not release the turnstile, when they finally resume the passage and asked by us why did they stop letting people through, the soldier answered angrily that they did not stop, he had lost his eye lens; there were another who could take over, of course, but since the answer began with denial (a well known practice) there was no point pushing any further.

7.20 Anata

The CP was swarmed with pupils, and the line of cars was very long. Jamil, the head of the village committe, and his ushers were working hard and results were quite clear. Jamil was very adamant no to allow anybody who was not a student to get through the children's entrance. A couple of teachers with green IDs were turned back because of the closure and so did a young woman who was pleading to be let through because of an exam. Jamil tried to advocate her case to no avail, she was really miserable.

We asked Jamil about the incident that took place two days ago, in the Eastern CP. Apparently one of the passengers of a bus stabbed the policeman who conducted the checkup inside the bus. The policeman was wounded in his throat quite badly and the Palestinian was held up. Because of this incident passengers now have to get off buses and walk through the CP.

At 8 o'clock all pupils have passed and there was not line of buses.