Qalandiya, Ar-Ram, Anata, Wednesday morning, 15.12.04.Observers: MB, SP, AT (Reporting)Guests: Two Ecumenical Accompaniers – their role is to cooperate with Israeli and Palestinian Peace and Human Rights activists6:45 – Qalandiya checkpoint. One common queue, one humanitarian queue and there is a big pressure. Thirty vehicles wait for the checking. Only one soldier checks the flux of people in the humanitarian queue – every school bag, even that of the smallest of the children, is opened – and the multitude loses patience. The soldier tries to sort in advance the men and to send them to the full checking queue in order to thin out the humanitarian queue. In the meanwhile the queue doesn’t move. A young and assertive Palestinian lady says that it would be better to let the men arrive to the checking and only then to send them to the other queue instead of delaying all the people. The soldier doesn’t answer but when her turn arrives she is checked for a long time. We ask the checkpoint commander to add another checking point in the humanitarian queue. And we ask ourselves as always – why aren’t there more checking points on rush hours; isn’t there enough manpower in so an important checkpoint? Must all the human traffic from Ramallah to Jerusalem pass through merely two soldiers?The agitation is huge. D from the combat engineering corps, whose role is to guard, tries to help: he finds people that need help for health reasons and asks the single checker in order to hurry up things – “Brother, look at this”, and if the checker approves, he lets the people pass through the gate for the people that crosses to Ramallah. Suddenly he sends a young teacher to the common queue. The teacher protests and asks for our help. Until we check with the officer that indeed teachers are allowed to cross through the humanitarian path, the teacher passes through the common queue and expresses his dissatisfaction from the way we function… It is very unpleasant.R., a high school student at Issawiya, is not allowed to cross since she has no ID card. How is it that she crosses everyday? She is registered in her parent’s ID and they are in Jordan now. But she is 16 and she must start the process of getting an ID card. What until then? We try to call the Moked using the numbers for non-working hours but the telephone calls disappoint: one of the numbers doesn’t belong at all and the other doesn’t answer. Only after the shift it appears that also the second number is mistaken. R. was sent back home and her family has contacted the Moked and it had given some advice.A woman sick with cancer that must go to medical treatment to Jerusalem asks us to file a complaint for her because she was delayed yesterday when she tried to cross by car. She is crossing by foot today. She has certificates about her sickness, about the treatment, about her vulnerability. Is it possible at the checkpoint, that at best is non-discriminatory and, depending on the specific shift (and therefore lacking human memory), consider a case like this? The answer is no. We give her the telephones of the Physicians for Human Rights.By the way, E., the DCO officer that was so involved in humanitarian affairs and tried to moderate a little the checkpoint brutality, looks pretty detached today. We realize for the second time that he has no clear authority in the checkpoint and that the soldiers in charge tend to ignore his recommendations. Are the DCO representatives, who were a human bright point, losing their relevance? On our way to the car we check about Jeep 76 with the bagel sellers. They tell us that it has not been there during the last few days. 8:24 Ar-Ram:We pass with the car and don’t stop since there is no queue – neither of vehicles nor of pedestrians.8:45 Anata:The BP’s receives us very atypically friendly. Y. discusses with us the meaning of the checkpoints and the occupation. H., the checkpoint commander, handles the case of a young woman that has no ID. The treatment is tolerant. Someone even offers us coffee. And what does it prove? It emphasizes that the checkpoint remains an immoral oppression instrument even if soldiers, who try to behave with restraint and morality, man it.Our two Ecumenical guests ask to contribute to Machsom Watch and they express appreciation for the organization activity. There is nothing to say – identification of foreign peace activists, help. We gave them Nava’s telephone numbers.