Bethlehem, El Khader, Ezyon, Sunday, December 4, AMWatchers: Sylvia P (filming), Ofra B (outraged), Chana A (reporting)How touching! A new name. Not a number anymore. The same symbols. Rachel is turning in her grave…The Rachel Crossing. A very poetic name (for Jews only) to a very horrible place (for the Other). The hole in the wallThree little Palestinian girls crossing INTO Bethlehem. Their house is caught between two impassable places, THE Wall and impenetrable Jerusalem.The entrance on the Bethlehem side. At our back two turnstiles…The way to school in Jerusalem through long corridors.6:45 The “Rachel crossing” looks deserted. We are determined to make our way around to the entrance for pedestrians and go through the CP with the Palestinians. Crossing the vehicle entrance is not a problem, there’s no one there. At the desired entrance is a very pleasant girl soldier who opens the turnstile for us and invites us to go in. Then the next turnstile and oops! it gets locked. Yoav, our old acquaintance (Rambo) pounds upon us. He is fully armed and armored, with hot and cold weapons, knee protectors and of course his helmet. He is very angry. What are we doing here, who do we think we are, do we know the danger we are in and he, who is responsible for protecting us, is here to force this protection on us. Ofra tells him in no uncertain terms what the reality is: Palestinians, especially children, have to go through the tortuous crossing with its turnstiles (that can be closed and opened by remote control) and long corridors (visible from the outside) and no one is there to monitor if there are more human rights offenses from the time the pedestrians enter until they come out on the other side. This is not a military installation but a border crossing, supervised by MP’s and should be accessible to everyone. In the meantime another MW group, Yehudit, Neta, and Nurit (?), come to see for themselves and we have a confrontation with the CP soldiers at the end of which neither side is convinced and we make an appointment with Dvir B, Chief Superintendent and the commander of the crosspoints unit. Report from this meeting, fixed for Monday (today) will no doubt be forthcoming. 7:40 El Khadr Many people are waiting for us and we start writing the petitions. Sylvia has now made a form letter so that it takes less time to fill in the details. 8:45 Ezyon DCL Again many petitions are filled out and we barely manage to extract ourselves at close to 11:00.On our way back there is a telephone call with the message that the Bethlehem CP was closed at 8:20 and opened again some time after (2 hours?) We also see a lot of Palestinian cars held up before the tunnels, but hear no more of it in the news. When we get home, there has been a storm of faxes from Bet El. We have 5 removals of the GSS refusal and 11 stay GSS refused, the usual percentage: ca. 30% get their refusal removed. It makes it worthwhile to persist in our procedure.