Bethlehem, Tue 13.4.10, Morning
06.45 AM, Bethlehem – Checkpoint 300: the checkpoint situated at the foot of Har Choma at the entrance to the Village of Mazmoria. To our surprise, the entrance to the village has been blocked at the round-about at its entrance, so that its impossible to enter it. People manage to find a way in, though it is not clear how. The soldier at the inspection station at the exit from the village doesn’t agree to our standing there and sends another soldier to remove us. We leave. It is early in the morning, and there is no traffic into or out of the village; a few school-children leave the village on foot and pass through the inspection station very quickly.
07.00 AM, Jerusalem Checkpoint: there are four inspection stations open, and a long queue at each of them. Everything is quiet and calm and everything is managed quickly. By 07.30 AM there is no queue and people coming out report that they completed the passage through the checkpoint within a quarter of an hour.
07.45 AM: on our way to our car we bump into a long line of cars in front of the checkpoint at the entrance to Bethlehem and reaching as far as the Hebron road. There is a female soldier in the inspection station who is lazily checking the Palestinians’ documents. There is no insepection of the vehicles. Of course she doesn’t take kindly to our viewing her at work and she tells us off for standing in a military area where we are forbidden to be. An argument develops, and in the meantime the queue lengthens, so we decide that its better to move a few meters away and let the traffic move forward.
We make one telephone-call to the Humanitarian office, and within five minutes the queue has disappeared and the the traffic starts to flow.
Of course there is the usual complaint by the drivers : “Why do you stand on this side and not at the exit where the situation is much worse, and we sometimes have to wait for two hours. The procedure is that we have to park our car, go on foot with our documents to the inspection station which is situated quite a distance from the parking lot, and then walk back to the car so that we can then drive through the checkpoint. This new procedure greatly slows-down our passage through the checkpoint , which was slow even beforehand “
Bethlehem (300)
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Located adjacent to the Separation Wall ("Jerusalem Wrap") at the north entrance to Bethlehem, this checkpoint cuts off Bethlehem and the entire West Bank from East Jerusalem, with all the serious implications for health services, trade, education, work and the fabric of life. The checkpoint is manned by the Border police and private security companies. It is an extensive infrastructure barrier and is designated as a border terminal, open 24 hours a day for foreign tourists. Israeli passport holders are not allowed to pass to Bethlehem, and Palestinian residents are not allowed to enter Jerusalem, except those with entry permits to Israel and East Jerusalem residents. Israeli buses are allowed to travel to Bethlehem only through this checkpoint.The checkpoint, which demonstrated harsh conditions of crowding and extreme passage delays for years, started employing advanced electronic identification posts and has upgraded its gates' system as of the middle of 2019 - and conditions improved.Adjacent to the checkpoint, in an enclosure between high walls and another passage, is the historic Rachel's Tomb, which is now embedded within a concrete fortified building. It contains prayer and study complexes for Jews only, as well as a residential complex. updated November 2019 .
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