South Hebron Hills Wednesday 19.5 (morning)Observers : Yaela, Tsafrira, HagitHagit reporting (Hebrew)Translated –Elena Dura al –Fawwar – open to cars with no soldiers in the pillbox. Beit Haggai junction-three military vehicles –no civilian traffic. The Sheep’s Crossing-a military vehicle ( Lavie regiment) is there- We watch from our usual observation point. Taxi drivers complain to us “why didn’t you come yesterday?”. The passage of pupils/students coming from Yatta had been halted and young men had been handcuffed and their IDs taken away – all these stories are about what happened when we were not there. ( Apparently our presence there is meaningful for the Palestinians. Today the soldiers stopped a Palestinian taxi, checked documents and very speedily let the taxi go. Zif Junction: The yellow gate towards Yatta is open. The route 60 –route 356 junction-A large striking billboard poster announcing ” The Messiah promises – No Jew will remain in the Diaspora (Galut) – The Lubavitcher Rabbi” On the right in the direction of Jerusalem, next to Shiyuch village –a new pillbox near an industrial building.Beit Ayyun – Shi’ur junction (near the girls’ school on the way to Halhul. There are two soldiers there alone –lieutenant Ya’ir and another soldier who seems very frightened and the guns are all the time held at the ready (the soldiers are to be pitied..). They belong to “Shaham” regiment of the Nahal and they behave gently both towards the Palestinians crossing the road and towards us ( how significant is gentleness when a gun is pointed at a little girl crossing the road on her way to school?)We walked over to the taxi drivers who raised the following two problems: The taxi drivers who have permits to travel short distances on route 60, are stopped by the ordinary (blue) police and given traffic tickets. When the tickets are made out, the policemen take their driving licenses away and tell them that the licenses will be returned to them at the Ras el-Amud police station.Ras el-Amud police station is in Jerusalem. In order to get there they have to pass at least three other checkpoints but, of course, they do not have permits to go to Jerusalem. The result is that they have no alternative but to break the law and sneak past the checkpoints. When they at last got to Ras al-Amud police station the licenses could not be found – and so they have had to repeat the operation three or four times. Catch 22. I spoke to Alex the DCO commander of Hebron who passed the matter on to his Operations officer ( kambatz) Motti. I also spoke to Danny Tweeser the deputy brigade commander of Hebron brigade who said that the blue uniformed police of Hebron were under his control and he would find a way to deal with the matter and he promised to get back to me within two days. We’ll wait and see. Dvorka will file a complaint and Adi will contact the media. I’ll follow developments via the phone (We left out phone numbers with them and since we returned home I have spoken to the bored taxi-driver at least three times). Yesterday before the soldiers arrived at the junction a white jeep passed by, carrying three men; one of them who, the Palestinians said, was called Amos, confiscated the keys (not their IDS) to their taxis – special keys- and it is extremely expensive to have copies made of them. So far the keys have not been returned. We asked the soldiers about this and it turned out that they had already passed the information on and that no one knew anyone called Amos. In a phone call to the deputy brigade commander (samchat), he admitted that they had already heard about the white jeep which arbitrarily (stam) mistreats Palestinians and it did not belong either to the police or to the army. The samchat promised to check the matter out. One wonders which will arrive first –the white ass or the solution to the mystery of the white jeep.We returned home sad and depressed.We set out at half past six am and were back at Shoket at nine am.