QalandiyaThu. June 16 2005 PMEdna K. and Lia N.Passing by Ar-Ram CP we saw a few men held up,sitting on the ground, inside the checkpoint. They hadbeen caught on their way back from Jerusalem with nolegal permits. A border policeman was filling out thestandard forms, sitting in the special, new “room”erected there. We gave the men our phone number, incase this took longer than usual, and continued on ourway to Qalandiya.At the junction things seemed to be quiet, there werequite a lot of peddlars – but later in the afternoonthe soldiers harassed them (this was documented by Ayaand Tami who arrived separately).At Qalandiya the checkpoint commander was Mor, whomwe’ve encountered in the past. She is always quiteaggressive to the people, addresses them veryunpleasantly, and is especially hostile towards us. Wetried to help a few people, but there wereinstructions forbidding anyone from Jennin or Tul Karmto pass. A woman who lives in Bir Naballa, but has notbeen able to change the Tul Karm address on her ID,was pleading with Mor, with the volunteer and with theDCO representative Uzi. No one could, or would, helpher. Finally, when she saw that Mor was somehwereelse, she tried passing again through the checkpoint,and managed to get home.Another woman, an Israeli citizen from Ramleh marriedto a man from Ramallah, was stopped in her car on herway back from Ramallah. We heard her shouting at thesoldiers after she’d been waiting in the car with herchildren for over an hour. She was screaming at thesoldiers, quite desperate but also very proud andfurious. This woman ended up spending three hours atthe checkpoint, before she was allowed to go on.Also detained were an Israeli “Halonot” activist onher way back from Ramallah, and a British womanmarried to a Palestinian from Shoafat. The Britishwoman was held for about two hours, finally sent backto Ramallah, but she managed to find her way acrossthe checkpoint. The activist was still there when weleft, but seemed to have struck a good relationshipwith Mor, who was supposedly trying to help her.At some point Aya and Tami showed up at thecheckpoint, after witnessing the violence at thejunction and seeing a soldier confiscate an ID. Thesoldiers all denied this, but finally the ID wasfound.Some of the interactions were quite violent verbally,and when the British woman’s relatives showed up andtried to approach her, they were pushed back andyelled at, a situation which almost got out of hand.The general atmosphere was horrid, and the hostilitytowards us very visible. Since we did lose our tempermore than once, an MP wrote down our names – he saidhe was not interested in filing a complaint against uspersonally, but rather against MW as a group. Goodluck to him.