Humanitarian Gate Thursday, 2/9/2004 Observers: DG, MB (reporting), a guest Our guest is a candidate for joining MW. 16:00. We had a mission to deliver something to a resident of Beit Umar from a MWer, so started out there. Having come that far, we decided tocontinue south, to “explore”. We realized that we were passing placesusually described by the Beer Sheva watchers — but we were about 70 kmsfrom Beer Sheva, and only about 30-40 from Jerusalem. We came upon theso-called “Humanitarian Gate”, and got stuck there for the duration of ourshift. The Humanitarian Gate, also known by the soldiers as CP Dla’at, ison road 35, just where it branches off from road 60, going west to KiryatGat. It is a metal gate, the kind found nowadays at the entrance to manykibbutzim and moshavim. It is either manned or closed. On its southside lies the road (not the only one, but the one in best condition, saidan informant) to Hebron. It is one of those places where Israelis (withoutspecial permits) cannot go one way, and Palestinians (without specialpermits) cannot go the other way. Passage to Hebron is for certain kindsof merchandise, and passage out of Hebron is for humanitarian cases, whohave obtained permits from Hebron DCO. There is a pillbox nearby, mannedaround the clock, and through it the gate can be opened as needed evenoff-hours. Today there were a decent bunch of soldiers there, willing toanswer questions (from them the aforementioned information), including theDCO representative. They said what we were witnessing is stricter controlthan customary, due to the enhanced security measures following the bombsin Beer Sheva. They worked diligently and politely, though they deniedpassage, in both directions, to vehicles that today’s orders excluded.During well over an hour, we saw no occasion to intervene, even for therefused, because the guidelines seemed to be clear and from above. Road 35 itself, though there was a CP structure at its entrance, was open forfree movement in either direction for both Israeli and Palestinianvehicles. Likewise for Road 60. Some of those refused entrance to Hebronfrom the “Humanitarian Gate” proceeded on road 35, apparently to anotherentrance further on, through a deteriorated road, but one more accessible(so we were told).We traveled with a UN map of checkpoints and roadblocks, and it did notquite match what our eyes saw. Oddly, the soldiers we encountered didn’tseem able to help, e.g., did not know the names of places on that map,etc.