Sheikh Saed, Abu-Dis, Zeitim CP Thursday, 17.08.2006, AM Observers: Neta A., Tamar A (reporter)Sheikh Saed: 07:05-09:00 – When we arrive there are fourteen detainees by the checkpoint. They tried to detour the checkpoint and are being held, according to the commander “for a short while”. After five to ten minutes they are all released.The place is deserted. During about an hour only 23 people passed, while about 15 are not allowed to pass. The process is “one by one” – for men and women – whoever is waiting in line has to stay by the checkpoint a few meters away from the soldiers. One man, holding a blue ID is demanded to pull up his t-shirt, and after a remark “I don’t see” the shirt too, and so, with his belly exposed, he has to turn around. Afterwards he was demanded to open his bag in some distance away from the soldiers before he can come and show his papers.About half of the people who were not allowed to pass are women who came from somewhere in the West Bank. A man who is on his way to an eye-check is sent to Zeitim CP, and a woman from Al-Ezariya with a child who wants to go to a hospital, but she has no documents showing this. She shows only her health insurance documents. After they told her to go back she tries to detour the checkpoint, but is caught by the commander who is very angry at her because she cheated on him: when she arrived to the checkpoint she claimed that she has no documents, when he caught her he found out that she has an orange ID. “She should thank me for not turning her over to the police” he says. The woman does not leave, she was perplexed – should she go to the checkpoint again, maybe another soldier will decide to do something else, maybe someone will soften.Abu-Dis: 08:25 – No one is around the closed wall, not even BP soldiers. There is no danger anymore that someone will try to pass. Only employees of the security company who watch over the building of the wall behind the houses. By the Pishpash the soldiers are sitting at the shade of the wall. No one wants to pass. A restaurant owner tells us that by decision of the court they will move the wall here a bit, and his restaurant, among some others, will be on the Jerusalem side.Zeitim CP: 08:40 – From Zeitim CP we look for a way to connect to Ma’ale Adumim – Jerusalem road towards Jerusalem. One has to go towards the sign “Az-Za’ayyem”, and get to the back of Zeitim CP. Two soldiers are standing there by a table, and there is passage for vehicles and pedestrians. One can not drive back the same way. The road that we took from A-Tour is one-way road. Later on, on the road from Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem there is no passage to A-Tour despite the sign marking this, unless there is a possibility to cross through Az-Zawiya, which we did not explore.