Qalandiya, Ar-Ram 07/05/2004 Watchers: Nava E., Rahel E. (reporting) 9:50, Ar-Ram. It was quiet. Few vehicles and pedestrians. 7 detainees –building workers from Beit Hanina who were caught at a building site without permits. They were standing in the sun since 8 in the morning, and were gradually released after we arrived. One of the detainees took out a medical referral for a one and a half year old baby who needed an emergency eye examination in a Jerusalem ophthalmic hospital. The letter was in English and Arabic, and we were shocked to see that the child needed care in both eyes. Today the child is already 3 years old and has still not gotten to the hospital, because of the difficulty for the father (who was detained in the past) to get a permit. We told him that the child would become totally blind if she doesn’t receive the proper care and we told him to turn to the Physicians for Human Rights. Because it was Friday, we got an answering machine from the two places that we contacted, and were not able to leave a message. The man was afraid to give us any personal information about himself. The commander of the border police in the area (Beni) and two other soldiers detained a driver that transported a young woman who accompanied a mother with a sick baby. The women showed the driver two permits, and he thought that one was for the grandmother and one for the daughter. However, the two permits were for the mother and the infant. After an argument and pleas of the befuddled driver and the grandmother, they were put into the transit of the driver and taken to the police station in Neve Ya’akov. The taxi dispatcher contacted us to tell us that the driver and his vehicle were released. 11:00, Qalandiya. One of the drivers took us to the end of the parking lot, several meters from the checkpoint, and showed us the progress in the building of the wall which reaches to the road which leads from Ramallah to the checkpoint. All the Palestinians spoke of the wall calling it the border. The checkpoint was quiet and there were no lines. 12:05, At the Ar-Ram checkpoint, there were 10 cars ahead of us, including a bus and two transits. All the passengers were taken off the public transportation and checked, one by one. We crossed after a 45 minute wait.