Bethlehem and surroundings , Thursday, 28 April 2005, morningObservers: Hadas B., Shalmit B. (reporting)Bethlehem CP 300, 7amA border police jeep urges 2 elderly women towards the checkpoint, calling out in the megaphone “go home”. We find out that the two work in cleaning in churches in Jerusalem. Various recommendation letters that they received from the churches were not enough to get them a working permit, and thus they were caught trying to sneak around the checkpoint. Our support of them creates a situation of constant arguments with the BP soldiers, whose responses range from verbal abuse to deaf politeness: the jeep driver – Lior Der’i – is beyond everyone else with responses as “I will be back and bite you all” and he attempts to stop Hadas from taking photos. The jeep and CP commander – David Aberjil –says: “what will you write about me? that I prevented illegal entrance?”. The older among the two women walks heavily and insists on not turning back. She waves a paper written in Arabic, which seems to be an invitation to the doctor. No one at the cp reads Arabic. After long debates she is allowed to continue into Jerusalem. Apart from that, only a few people pass through the cp due to the closure; there is one detainee under the tree; conversations with the soldiers in the right spirit. One mentions that he is “actually doesn’t support Rabin’s assassination”‘ another implies that our argument about the women brought on a hardening of the soldiers’ positions. Beit Jala CPApproximately ten cars await when we arrive but it seems that the waiting time shortens while we are there. The soldiers are polite, and say that in this cp the closure has no effect. A taxi driver tells us about an old lady he had driven the other day, who was stopped at the tunnel cp, in spite of her having a permit to “accompany an ill person” regarding her baby granddaughter who is hospitalized in Jerusalem. We gave him the card of the MOKED for similar cases in the future. Etzion DCOThree men wait beside the window. One of them, about 30 years old , tells us that he didn’t receive a magnetic card since he was “refused by police”. After he hired a lawyer (1,100 NIS) the record was erased, and he obtained a letter testifying his clean record from the police. But today the soldier in the window told him “I don’t care to see your letter” and then he found out he is actually “refused by GSS”. We gave him Firas’ – of the Organization for Human Rights – phone number. From there we headed on to Halhul. In spite of the accident and shootings a few days before army is present only in the pillbox and in the entrance to El Arub, but there are no flying cps. Then we continued to the demonstration in Bil’in, against the confiscation of lands in favor of the wall (or rather in favor of the expanding settlements). Approximately one hundred peace activists and a couple of hundred people from the villages joined. We walked to the village outskirts – on the opposite hill bulldozers nibble white scars in what was till 2 months ago a part of the villagers’ olive orchards. Though the demonstrators maintained a non-provocative protest, very soon the soldiers started shooting tear gas and other ammunition. Soldiers dressed as Palestinians hurled stones and hastened to arrest demonstrators. For several hours every attempt of the demonstrators to proceed towards the bulldozers, was answered by shooting of tear gas. I returned with a heavy feeling regarding the uninhibited violence of the army, though encouraged by the feeling of cooperation within the village.