Ar-Ram, Qalandiya 15.2.06, Wednesday PM Daniela Y, Hanna T, Ivonne M (reporting)The radio has announced this will be the coldest day of the year. Nobody goes out unless it is absolutely necessary. Ar-Ram, 3:45A long line of cars waiting to go south towards Jerusalem, no checking of cars going north. Few pedestrians crossing the checkpoint.Qalandiya:The southern section of the checkpoint is full of mud. The road that connects the Qalandiya with the east, which was open during Palestinian election day, is again closed by a yellow iron bar, so prevalent all over the West Bank. These yellow iron bars have replaced in many places the cement blocks so that they allow selective passage of vehicles. Again the people coming from the east (the only road that connects Ramallah with the southern and eastern West Bank) have to walk hundreds of meters to reach the checkpoint. For the elderly and the disabled this is a very big problem. We see people helping old women and carrying their bags and belongings and others leading blind people through the mud and the puddles.At 4:10 we watch the car lanes and see that the cars coming out from Ramallah and going south are not moving and are not being checked. After a few minutes of our standing there they begin to check them again.The pedestrian access at the north of the checkpoint, coming from Ramallah, is extremely muddy and with big puddles everywhere. All the pedestrian lane leading to the checkpoint has been lined with cement blocks and right in front of the main access there is an earth mound which people have to climb in order to reach the checkpoint from the north. This earth mound has become a mud trap and women with babies, old people, everyone has to climb this slippery obstacle with the danger of falling. After crossing this muddy obstacle a very happy sign greets the Palestinians: “Welcome to the Atarot Crossing, have a nice stay, please wait patiently”. In view of the perils Palestinians go through to reach the checkpoint this sign seems like quite a cruel joke.Once inside the checkpoint, the soldiers shout out orders through the loudspeakers and tell people on which of the 5 lanes to stand in line in order to go through the carrousel to be checked. We were standing with everyone in line 1 and heard the unintelligible orders and were told by people around us that women had now to stand in lane number 2. About 2 minutes later we see the line in lane number 2 dispersing and people moving to lane 1. After a couple of minutes a new order is heard to go to lanes 1, 4 and 5. During all this period, the checking is very superficial and we see no reason for the constant change of lanes ordered by the soldiers. We believe it is the soldiers’ way to fight boredom, to see how Palestinians run from one lane to the other. All this time the volume of the loudspeakers is extremely high and nerve wrecking. The army has built a big new checkpoint, written “welcome” all over and then sends Palestinians to jump in the mud and wait in the midst of terrible loud shouting.At the southern entrance to the checkpoint, the “welcome – The hope of us all” sign has been again filled with graffiti: “Jews against Genocide”, “Work makes us free”, “Shlomo was here”.At Ar-Ram, the east-west fence that will become the permanent separation wall that will encircle all of A-Ram village and be united with the existing south-north wall that reaches all the way to Qalandya, has been put up.Ibrahim, the owner of the “Green House” restaurant on the eastern side of the road just a few meters north of the A-Ram checkpoint where we sit after our shift to write our report, tells us that Israeli Income Tax agents have come to check him and don’t believe he has no work. We have never seen other clients, besides ourselves, eating or drinking there. He says we are his first clients this day but he keeps open because it is very bad for Palestinians to see that everything is being closed, “people should not feel defeated”.