Dogs, dog trainer

Translation: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya:
At the deserted territory over which no authority takes responsibility, the place which is a 'no man's land", that according to the maps belongs to the city of Jerusalem that holds the duty to provide services such as the evacuation of garbage which is just one example, piles of trash were set fire to near the wall that surrounds the checkpoint, for this is the only option that the residents of the  refugee camp have for getting rid of this sanitary hazard that accumulates into mountains of garbage.
The claim made by the workers of the municipality that they avoid the place for fear of violence and attacks, are unconvincing in light of the raids performed by the inspectors on the poverty stricken paddlers, hunting down children as well as men, events which occur every day in that very same place.

On the wall, in black and blue was a greeting from Berlin:
"Freedom, Peace & Justice for Palestine! Tabea from Berlin". And between the hundreds of vehicles stuck in endless traffic jam, that tail of which could not be seen, the child Muhamad was selling lupines packed in nylon bags tied in a rubber band.

Jaba checkpoint:
Lately (so say the cab drivers), soldiers have been reinforcing the policemen who prevent those coming out of Ramallah/Qalandiya from driving freely on road 60 on their way to Hizmee checkpoint. Apparently, there is need for combined forces for this assignment which is in service of the settlers.

Four Palestinian detainees stood by the checkpoint, watching the dog and its trainer walk towards their car, inside and around which the dog received its training. Once the pair from the Oketz unit were finished and the owner of the Palestinian car that "hosted" the dog (which according to Islam defiles everything it comes in contact with), did as Palestinians do after decades of years under occupation, each time they are released without harm, and shouted loudly towards the soldier that returned his keys to him: "Thank you so much!".

Translation: Bracha B.A.

07:00 – 07:40 – Shaked-Tura Checkpoint

It is a clear and very cold day.  We were greeted by the yellow and black flags of the Kfir Brigade, with a vampire emblem. 

The checkpoint is open.  Two men and two women soldiers are in the area between the two gates and another is in the position above. A lot of people are waiting on the Tura side. They cross without delay and continue on to work. A tractor, two small trucks, and private cars also cross.  A donkey crosses to Tura and a horse crosses in the direction of Dar al Kalakh. Our guest photographs the horse.  Despite the fact that she did not photograph soldiers, the soldier ordered her not to take pictures of soldiers, and told her, "You can photograph horses somewhere else." We stood above the checkpoint and he went off to do his job.  Cars are being meticulously checked, and hoods are opened as well as doors.   By 07:40 the herd of goats has not crossed yet.  We continued on to Barta'a.   

07:55 – Reihan Barta'a Checkpoint

12 vans are waiting and a lot of people are getting into cars on their way to Barta'a.   A line of cars leaves the garden near the inspection point.  We can hear a dog barking. A checkpoint attendant comes and closes the doors to the inspection facility garden.  He shouts something having to do with "Kahana was right".  

The minibus to Barta'a is standing next to the position on the road.  We could see the passengers placing their cards on the box outside the facility instead of swiping them through the slot.  Drivers still have to collect the IDs of their passengers and show them at the booth.  

One window is open inside the terminal.  We hear voices from the line of people crossing, they are attempting to convince one of the inspectors about something to do with a photograph on someone's ID.  They have evidently succeeded because after about 10 minutes everyone came out.  Meanwhile a line has formed on the way to the inspection rooms. The attendant calls and asks for help.   "Guard!  Why are they standing here?"   She has stopped the turnstile, and it began working again a few minutes later. Four people were sitting and waiting next to the wall, but we didn't understand why.

At 08:20 a second window opened and the crowd disappeared.  Some people said they had waited a half hour, and others said they had gone through quickly.

We left at 08:30.

Habla

13:30 –

The Palestinians who enter and some of those who leave praise the woman soldier at the gate (from the Military Police). Listening to an argument between a soldier and an elderly resident accompanied by a boy, we have learned a new term. The birth certificate of children under 16 that has to be in their pocket every time they enter or leave, is called "Kushan" [The term Kushan, used here figuratively, is a certificate of registration of immovable]. The boy didn't have the certificate but they were finally allowed to leave, with a warning. Old tractors and donkey-drawn carts pass and a school-children bus arrives at the exit.

14:00 –

The soldiers check the bus, the driver and the children for over 10 minutes. The whole while, three workers who wish to return to their village stand waiting near us. Suddenly the gate closes and the woman soldier who checks documents on the computer refuses to let them in. we intervene and explain that the workers were here on time. The commander orders her to run the check personally and within a minute they are let in.

Huwwara

15:00 –

The traffic is streaming and no soldiers are seen. At the square, in a camouflage net covered post, a soldier can be seen with his gun pointing in the direction of Huwwara.

Awarte

15:15 –

We enter the village and see no military at all.

Za'tara

16:00 –

A row of 12 cars waiting to pass. The traffic is streaming but in the adjacent parking lot about 8 men and women soldiers are checking thoroughly a Palestinian car whose driver and two passengers are standing outside. While all the parts of the car are being checked and the trunk is being emptied, a dog trainer arrives. Everyone is watching the dog doing its work and another dog trainer is waiting with her dog. We understand that we are watching soldiers training a search in a suspicious vehicle. Nearby a military jeep that was about to leave changes its position after seeing us and stands at an angle that hides the sight from us. We wonder if the owner of the vehicle is compensated for the time he lost for the sake of military training.

Azzun Atme

16:30 –

We go to Azzun Atme following our friends' complaint about what is going on at the time the workers leave and get back. We find a line of 25 people waiting in a narrow passage adjacent to a busy main road. The first group is quickly vacated and checked in the big, canopy covered area, where soldiers are standing and checking documents. Vehicles keep coming every few minutes, sending out workers who are ordered to regroup and stand in one line close to the road and then ordered to hurry in order to make room for the next group. We cannot understand why the workers are not told to right away in lines in the covered and safer area, where they won't crowd in a narrow, dangerous row. It is obvious that the covered place is meant only for soldiers.

A large group of soldiers arrives accompanied by a company commander and three vehicles, maybe following the complaints about the last days' events. According to the soldiers, the big pressure at the entrance and the exit started after the Ramadan [a Muslim holiday], which neither they nor the workers can explain. We even hear a settler from a nearby settlement complaining that leaving in the mornings is so difficult that many contractors left without the workers. We feel for those who lost a day of work.

Translation:  Suzanne O.

It was a rainy day (a great thing for the Palestinians because their wells fill up), the roads were deserted and many of the shops were closed.

The shop owner we know at Kifl Haris was not there.

At Qira we found an open shop and talked to the owner.  There have been no irregular incidents in the village during the olive picking but she knows that in Zeita Jamma'n settlers brought sheep into the olive grove.  When we asked what damage had been caused she said that year on year the yield of oil the farmer gets from his trees goes down because of the damage that the sheep cause.  In one of the 'visits' the settlers paid to the grove they threw stones and damaged a tractor.  In this case, she said, other settlers came and threw out the attackers, we are not sure they were settlers, left wingers or guards in civilian clothes.

Theft of crops:  one of the farmers left sacks of olives on the road and they were all stolen, apparently by settlers.

At the club in Kafr ad Dik we energetically continued the bead stringing led by Tova, they produce beautiful necklaces and are preparing to show them at the bazaar which will take place a Salfit in two weeks time, if they have enough we will offer them for sale at the Cinematek conference. 

Watchers:  Nora R., Chana P. (reporting)

Translation:  Suzanne O.

Agricultural Gate Jayyus

7:10 a.m.

Because of a puncture in a tyre we skipped Habla and drove to the agricultural gate Jayyus.  Carts, tractors and pedestrians come to the gate.  They come for the olive picking which will last for another 7 days.  At 7:30 a.m., the gate closed.  (In fact there are two systems of gates…)

We continued to Jayyus village, to see Nayim and give him clothes for his wife's shop.  There was nothing we could do; we had to enjoy breakfast with them.

Falamiya Gate

8:45 a.m. 

A tractor is parked by the gate, full of olive plants and canisters of oil.  Since the driver had no permit to take the plants to his grove, he was not allowed to cross.  He said he is going to the DCO to get a permit.

Kafr Jammal

9:30 a.m. 

We stopped on the way to talk with people and they told us that they had sacks of olives which they picked last week but had not received a permit to remove them from the area.  They are trying to get a permit but they are rejected and sent back and forth.

Jubara

9:30 a.m. 

At the gate we met a man with a tractor pulling a cart containing an ox.  There was no permit for the ox!  Therefore he was unable to cross.  We phoned the DCO and they phoned the gate but the man claimed that it was too late and did not try to cross.  He claimed that things are getting worse at the gate today, previously he had not been stopped.  In addition each vehicle is inspected by a dog.

From here we returned home. 

Translating: Ruth Fleishman

Qalandiya checkpoint (photo: Behing the wall) :

Palestinian friends that witnessed the women's demonstration on the previous day said that during the time it was taking place, the checkpoint had been closed from both sides for two hours. They testified that cement bricks were brought ten days before hand, they were used to block the roads and had been carried from the side of the roads to their center a day in advance and the way leading to and from Ramallah was blocked up until Sunday. 

Only two lanes were active at the pedestrian checkpoint. Suddenly, as though they had been given a green signal, the two had stopped operating and no one was allowed in the inspection area. The lines grew wider and longer. Not only that no explanation was given, but all the soldiers had disappeared and the post at the end of our lane (no. 2) remained empty. After a nerve wracking twenty minutes, and not before we called the operation room receptionist to asked whether the checkpoint was closed for passage, the checkpoint was activated again.   

At the waiting shed at the entrance to the checkpoint we met to desperate women from Gaza: the young one was a woman who went through a medical procedure in her eyes at the hospital in Ramallah and the other was her escort (probably her mother). Their permits had expired on Saturday. The DCO in Gaza that had been handling their case over the phone allowed them to pass a day later. When they gave the inspecting soldier their original "Tasrih", he confiscated the document and banished them from the site. Had the inspector behind the shielded window checked these women's information on the computer (as they had asked him) he would have known that a new permit was waiting for them at the DCO. When we asked the soldiers agreed to check their ID numbers, but by then it was too late, the DCO offices had already closed and no one was to be found there.

The women were forced to return to Ramallah, rent a hotel room and return to the checkpoint on the next day.

Jaba checkpoint:

Apart for a group of soldiers who had their rifles pointing at vehicles, a dog trainer and a dog with a muzzle on his mouth were also at the site. The checkpoint commander crossed the road towards us and in an instance started giving us his long speech, it was full of arguments against our presence and it start with: "you are endangering yourselves…", and continued with: "your presence is distracting my soldiers…", following this sentence came: "I don't like seeing you endangering soldiers….", and he even tried this one: "nothing is going on over here, it's a real bore!..."

We answered that we were going to stay and document, that we weren't concerned for our safety, that we had no intentions of talking to the soldiers and that we were not endangering them, and that we would overcome the boredom that he promised us. 

He got back to the post and after several minutes the soldiers stopped a car, the driver got out of it, the muzzle was taken off the dog who sniffed the car from all sides, his trainer opened the doors and being so familiar with the job, he got inside, sat on the driver's seat and then wondered off to the rest of the seats, once he finished his task in a manner that satisfied his lady, he received signs of affection from her. Only then was the vehicle given back to its owner who was permitted to head on.

6:00 Reihan-Barta'a CP

Three taxis and two Transit vans are waiting in the parking lot on the side of the seamline zone. M. says that everything is ok in the terminal. We hear yelling and barking from the vehicle inspection pavilion. In front of us, on the road, a truck with two big carts is being inspected by means of a dog and a mirror. When we reach the turnstiles, we find out that a number of the seamstresses, apparently two of them, are not allowed to go through. The head of the workshop is called out, and tries to convince the soldier to allow them go through – but he does not succeed. Afterwards, he tells us that their permits became invalid on the 26 of August and they already have new permits which, for some reason, will be valid from the 30 of August. Somebody forced a vacation on them, almost certainly without pay.

We walk down to the parking lot on the side of the West Bank. A guard delays us; he does not allow us to go through, and a woman who is stationed at the post uses a loudspeaker to order him not to talk to us. In the end the person in charge of the CP allows us to go ahead. The parking lot is almost empty. A pickup truck with goods is waiting on the road and another three are in the parking lot. A few people come to the terminal. Hannah is waiting for someone who needs forms signed for getting a permit and I travel with our driver, Huri, to the Shaked/Tura CP.

7:10 Shaked-Tura CP

The gate at the front is open while the inside gate and the gate at the back are being opened only now. There is a new piece of equipment to beautify the CP: there is a barbed wire fence the length of the road, almost from the entry gate and over the concrete hut beyond which there is a path for pedestrians. Soon, when the school children will go back to their studies in Tura – they will be walking on a narrower path; they will have to be careful not to tear their clothes or to get hurt.

A woman from Daher el Malek - who intends to go through to the West Bank with her children – tells us that her husband, who grows tobacco on the other side of the fence, asked to transport a few sacks of tobacco to the seamline zone – and was punished by the soldiers at the CP who took away his documents. Now he cannot accompany his family who are going to visit relatives on the West Bank.

A teacher who wishes to transport two boxes full of books for the school at Umm-el Reihan arrives from the other side. He is not allowed to do this without having arranged for this in advance. At 7:40 a herd of goats goes through and after that all is quiet in the CP.

 Translation: Hanna K.

14:30 Azzun Atma gate – The workers haven't yet returned from work therefore there is no queue near the gates at the entrance for checking. The soldiers try to remove us from the CP.

14:45 The industrial zone of Ariel – accelerated building of big industrial constructions on the top of the mountain.

15:00   Za'tara/Tapuah CP –

A detained minibus. Its 10 passengers, Palestinian young men, stand to the side. A girl dog trainer with her dog check the minibus inside – the dog sniffs between the seats, outside the vehicle, underneath it, the upholstering of the seats is taken out, put on the road, undergoes a check.

The detained Palestinians are policemen who travel from Tulkarem to Jericho. The check lasted a quarter of an hour. The border-policemen try to prevent us from photographing. Tamar shows them the photographing authorization from the IDF spokesman.

A Palestinian driver arrives: he says that the settlers threw stones on his vehicle two days ago: a stone hit the side of the door – one can see the dent. A soldier sends him to complain at the Ariel police station.

There is a heavy traffic of vehicles especially from Ramallah heading for Nablus.

As usual settler notices are displayed flauntingly and without any interference on the CP fence (they now are about the going up to Mitzpe Yossef).

15:25 A commandcar stands ready at Huwwara; North of the usual place (the parking lot opposite Beita)

15:32 Huwwara CP – The soldiers are on the tower.

Near the tower one sees today (for the first time) a high wall of dense concrete sheets around a small container and above those a barbed wire fence. To protect the soldiers? To hide detainees?

      Awarta CP –

A yellow iron arm closes it and is locked – there is no possibility of passage. The locals cannot reach the village, only by way of the Huwwara CP. We shall send in a photograph of a direction signpost in English and Arabic which bears witness to a forbidden road for Palestinians, i.e. an apartheid road.

Beit Furic CP – There were no soldiers in the tower.

16:50 Za'tara/Tapuah CP – A few border policemen are under the watch tower in the parking lot. Vehicles are not being checked.

Translator:  Charles K.

 Awarta Visit

13:30  Habla.  The gates are open.  Three people at the inspection booth.  A pickup truck loaded with seedlings leaves the village.  The school buses have already crossed.  A truck and horse cart are waiting to be inspected.  Today is calm here.

13:50  Eliyahu crossing.  Ten vehicles on line to enter Israel.

A military vehicle parked next to a car belonging to an Israeli woman (a settler?) at the entrance to the village of A-Nabi Elias.  We didn’t stop to see what was going on.

13:50  A military jeep and three soldiers parked at the entrance to Azzun.

 14:05  A military jeep next to a car at the Jit junction.

 We turn south to Route 60.  New red roofs in Yitzhar, on the right - Construction continues apace.

14:15  Huwwara – Traffic flows in both directions, without inspections.  From a distance we don’t see soldiers, but three appear as we approach, walking toward us.  In response to our question they say they’ll begin randomly inspecting vehicles in another 15 minutes.  We didn’t wait.

14:30  Beit Furiq checkpoint.  We don’t see soldiers on site.  A tractor is cleaning the side of the road to Elon Moreh.

14:40  Soldiers at a firing range by the side of the road to Awarta.

14:45  Awarta – We go into a garage, and amid the grease fumes hear the account of one of the villagers.  On Monday night/Tuesday morning (March 29/30) soldiers entered homes, took more than 40 people outside, men of all ages, handcuffed them, took them to the base, and interrogated them, handcuffed, until 4 AM.  During this time houses were searched, using dogs.  In some homes they broke and destroyed whatever they came across.  One of his neighbors said to an officer: “There are little children here who are trembling with fear.”  The officer:  “Shut up.”  Many children have begun to wet their beds.

One of his neighbors had NIS 2000 in a drawer.  The money disappeared.

That night two trailers were placed on the hill between Awarta and Itamar, and the place was called the “young people’s neighborhood.”  That’s how the abominable murders are exploited to take over more land.

Groups of soldiers usually come at night and march through the village alleys to remind them who’s in charge.

Two young men walking past enter and join the conversation.  One, aged 18, says they took him from his home at 10:30, and interrogated him at the base (apparently at the DCO) until 14:30 the following afternoon.  When he complained that the handcuffs were hurting him, the interrogator hit him.

The settlers say there are four tombs of Jewish holy men in the village.  Before they come to pray, the army closes the area.  They bring black spray paint and write “Death to Arabs” on the houses.  On their way back they throw rocks and break the windows of cars and homes and destroy gravestones in the Moslem cemetery they pass through.  Soldier enter the mosque wearing shoes, with dogs.  Border Police soldiers drive through, cursing in Arabic over the loudspeaker.

Only 17 villagers have permits to work in Israel.  After the murders, ten had their permits taken away.  Most work in Nablus, earning NIS 70 per day.  Many young men can’t marry because they can’t afford to build a house.  They barely have enough to eat.

15:30  We left Awarta, and returned to Huwwara through the narrow alleys of Odala village.

16:15  No soldiers at the Za’tar/Tapuach junction.

16:30  Shomron crossing – A few vehicles going through.  A female soldier asks to see our ID’s.

 16:40  Azzun Atma – More than 20 people on line for inspections.  The line moves slowly.