Ar-ram, Qalandiya, Sunday, 26,3,2006, p.m.Observers: Tamar F. (reporting) Natanya G.Closure in the territories.Ar-RamThe beginning of the shift reminded one of the ending scene in “Near To Home”. We were witnesses to an incident which epitomizes the fate of a Palestinian who delays for a second showing his ID to the border police. At about 3:40 the border police patrolling Ar-Ram near the roundabout where we usually take a taxi to Qalandiya two men approached who were having an argument about a debt. A third man, Muhammed, intervened and the police asked for all their IDs. Muhammed for his own reasons tried to get smart and avoid showing them his. (He has a blue ID with no charges against him). This angered them and brought on a violent action from the police who called for reinforcements on the grounds that they were being attacked. Other jeeps arrived and a shock grenade was thrown into the entrance of a grocery shop close to a school.The owner came out shouting that there were children in the shop who were frightened and one of the border police who was standing nearby hit him in his face with the grenade that was in his hand. Other Palestinians, alarmed at the noise of the grenade, arrived. We were at the place a few seconds after the first grenade was thrown and saw no violence by the Palestinians. The soldiers continued to throw shock grenades including two or three which were thrown towards the other side of the roundabout, near a workshop.At this stage they handcuffed Muhammed and drove off with him in one of the jeeps towards the checkpoint.After a few minutes chief inspector Hani and his assistant arrive. The officer listened to the complaints of the Palestinians and ordered all the soldiers who had been involved to return to Ar-Ram for a debriefing.We ourselves returned to the checkpoint where we met Muhammed who was sitting in the jeep and managed to exchange a few words with him and he said he had been beaten on the way there.The soldiers fabricated a story and said that he had attacked them. Chief Inspector Hani interrogated his soldiers. This took over an hour and Muhammed was arrested on the charge that he had attacked the soldiers.The next morning we phoned his brother who said that he had been freed the same night and complained that at 1 a.m., in the morning there had been another incident in which border police and the security guards had been involved. A Palestinian, Abad Suleima, had been shot in his foot, and taken by ambulance to Sh’arei Zedek for an operation.This morning we filed a complaint on both incidents with Chief Superintendent Nava Brook at the headquarters of the border police. QalandiyaWe arrived there close to darkness. When we passed through turnstile 3, the humanitarian turnstile, we met a disabled man in a wheelchair next to the gate. The communication device was not working and he could not cross. We also did not manage to work it. Anton, the DCO representative stood behind us watching and Natanya called to him to ask for help but he simply stood there as if both we and the man in the wheelchair were transparent. We phoned Ophir at the DCO and he came back to us to say that that turnstile was not working and that this had been announced on the public address system. (Neither the man nor we heard any such thing.) In the meantime Natanya managed to catch the attention of the soldiers in the 4th turnstile. Not an easy matter in itself and we finally got him through there. Why are there no signs?