Qalandiya, 26.4.05, PMObservers: Iris B., Roni H. (reporting), Shadi (guest)We spent a great part of our shift taking testimonies from pedlars, whose merchandise was confiscated by Jerusalem Municipality inspectors today in the morning. At 9:30 several municipality cars together with border police jeeps and blue police cars arrived at Qalandiya square and began to load on their truck one pedlar’s cart after the other together with all the merchandise on it and drove off in direction of Jerusalem. The pretext was, that the square belongs to the checkpoint zone and therefore it is not allowed to trade there. When one of the street vendors demanded a document for his confiscated property, which is a most basic demand, he was pushed away by the police man. Not one of them has received any written record of their possessions and they did not know where their merchandise was taken to! We contacted Limor Yehuda from the Association for Civil Rights and she gave us the advice to call the Municipality hotline (106) and first of all to find out which department was responsible for this action and where one can get back one’s property. We called and found out that the municipal control department has indeed sent its inspectors today to Qalandiya and that the merchandise has been brought to Givat Shaul, maintenance center. Tomorrow morning we shall call there and, hopefully, get more concrete information. It is, of course, totally illegal to confiscate property without leaving a detailed record with the owner! We hope that the Association of Civil Rights will write a letter of principle to the municipality concerning the illegality of this procedure. Individual complaints will have to be filed personally to the Assocoation. Last week a similiar assault on the pedlars by the municipality inspectors (with confiscations) has taken place and when one of the street vendors came to file a complaint in DCO Bet El, he received instead a fine of IS 800 for the cost of transportation!!! Nevertheless, in the afternoon, several pedlars were back on the square and in the corridor, leading to the checking area! As always – life is stronger than oppression! In the checking area, we found three detainees, owners of Israeli IDs, who were held up when coming back from the north. The same old story – Israelis are not allowed into area A and the police was called. One was a Jewish Jerusalmite, one Arabic woman from Ramleh, the other one from Um el Fahem. To shorten the procedure of “waiting” hours for the police, who usually does not come, we called Tamar, the assistant of the division commander, and in a short time the detainees were released and could continue on their way.