09:30-12:30

At this hour there are no laborers going through the Meitar crossing.

The school year has opened.  The roads are almost completely empty at this hour.  Military presence is felt only in Hebron and by the balloon above Beit Haggai.

Al-Fawwar– where a boy was killed last week throwing rocks – is deserted and there’s no roadblock.

The entrance to Hebron below Beit Haggai is open.

Two people in the booth at the entrance to Kiryat Arba – a Border Police soldier and a paratrooper.

Hebron

Large numbers of paratroopers in the city.  Many APC’s at every corner.  A tense quiet.

A., our friend, tells us that at night stones and Molotov cocktails are thrown.

A soldier blocked the Tarpat checkpoint.  The booth burned last week hasn’t been replaced; soldiers and a security vehicle are on site, not allowing people to enter Area H1 from there.

At the metal shop we met a local owner of a table and bed factory.  “We have everything,” he says, “we don’t lack money but there’s no joy; we’re in prison, we have no freedom.”  He says his children are excellent pupils but, except for one who’s studying in Hebron’s “Technion,” they don’t want to stay in school because they don’t see any point.  There’s no future – what will they do with their degrees?  At one time he’d wanted to study engineering in Germany but the authorities refused permission. 

A “grass widow” – a manned position – on the roof of a building overlooking the Worshippers route.