Sheikh Sa’ad

From 5:00 till 6:00 PM

Since Hanna B. and Tamar A. were already at CP 300 we decided to go to Sheikh Sa’ad after out visit to the city of Bethlehem. This was the first time we drove down in the dark, which was no easy feat and rather scary. We were told by a nice soldier to please move our car away from the CP where we had wanted to park it under the bright lights.

There are now turnstiles (installed about a month ago) both on the bottom and the top of the climb and in the middle a civilian guard asked us whether we were allowed to continue. He said that a group had had to sign a waver before they were allowed in. We claimed that we had always been allowed into the village and even beyond. A commander was called and we were told that we could enter, but not exit. Only inhabitants of Jebel Mukaber are allowed to leave and those residents of Sheikh Sa’ad  in possession of a permit.
 
We wondered  hotel accommodations in Sheikh Sa’ad or the possibility of exiting via Sawahre and finding a cab to drive us all the way around to pick up the car. But meanwhile we waited. It then turned out that the soldier had received information from the Olive Terminal DCL that there is an order from above (Tzav Aluf) that we are not allowed into area B. He suggested we ask for more details from Adi, their Commander at tel. 050 627 6250, but he was not available, so we gave up.

Later in the evening we saw a cab in the city, which  belonged to the Nof Zion taxi stand, till now we had been unaware of its existence.