BEthlehem area- Wednesday PM, 5.7.06Observers: Daniela G., Idit S., Maya BH (reporting)15:00. Tunnel CP: As usual, no checks going out of Jerusalem, but a blue police car was on the left margin.Al Nashash: The usual hustle and bustle. Little kids running around trying to sell plums. “5 shekels”, says one. “1 shekel”, corrects him another. We bought some fruit.Ezyon roundabout gas station: We stop for the regular exchange of documents. Palestinians with fines to pay but no way to get to the places one pays in bring their citations and money. These go to some angels in MW who run the errand of paying those fines. The week after, the signed and stamped documents will be returned at some agreed upon meeting point in Area B, and the process will be repeated.Ezyon CP: Again, Palestinians eager to receive one document or other are pressing against the turnstiles. When it opens, they squeeze sometimes 3 in one cell. When it closes again, they are trapped in this cell. Will there be additional numbers doled out today? Or will there not? Patiently, desperately, they wait and wait. Today those with patience to wait were rewarded: 10 minutes after the soldiers assured us that no numbers would be given out this afternoon, a soldier comes out with numbers. The joy is as if they had won the lottery. Another MW angel helps us fill petition forms for magnetic cards, instructing us on the phone what to write, who to call, how to make life a wee bit better for people, how to give them hope, feeble as it might be. We leave when it seems that all the people waiting will be given a chance at the windows.Bethlehem CPM, around 5pm. We had never seen so many people waiting to pass home, to the Palestinian authority. Only one checking booth is open. People trickle past it, but busses pour out additional groups. We wonder that nobody is concerned about the growing number of tired, frustrated men, pressing to get in, to pass. We call R., the commander of the blue police at the CP. He comes at once, and between one thing and another, 3 additional checking booths are manned (womanned, actually, by female soldiers), and passage is speeded up. The procedure is that each magnetic card is swiped, and if it checks out, the holder can pass. We see one man taken aside, to a side room whose door is closed. For what, we do not know. R. thanks us for drawing his attention to the growing crowds. And we wonder among ourselves: there are soldiers patrolling the balcony above the checking booths, there are cameras trained on the queue — and the authorities really don’t know what’s going on until we tell them???