Jerusalem 25/5/2004 [Shavu’ot holiday eve] Watchers: Ronnie Y., Rachel O., Hannah Y. (reporting) I was the first of our group to arrive at the checkpoint on Prophets Street. Only one girl of the border police was there. She kept herself ostentatiously busy with her backpack that lay at her feet. Palestinian pedestrians passed unchecked. Just before 6.30, a jeep arrived with five soldiers duly equipped with guns but also with sandwiches, which they proceeded to consume on the sidewalk. A second border police girl took up duty at the checkpoint. By now, Ronnie and Rachel had arrived. We watched for a while and thought that if this checkpoint was so quiet, there must be other checkpoints more to the east where people were held up indefinitely. Nevertheless, one of the soldiers, who had finished his breakfast, climbed on top of a wall and struck a intimidating pose, obviously to show off rather than to avert any impending danger. One of the border police girls came up to us and asked if we needed any help. Ronnie smiled and started her usual explanation about MachsomWatch, but the girl already knew about us. It was hard to determine if she had come to show sympathy or dislike. We decided to go walk eastwards. The streets were crowded with policemen and soldiers. Since there was hardly any traffic between east- and west-Jerusalem, we concluded that their main objective was to show us, the Jewish population, that we are well protected on the eve of Shavu’ot.Ronnie, who has eyes in her back, spotted three Palestinians sitting on a low wall. They told us that they had come from the west bank, and were waiting for the border police to return their papers to them. The border police were nowhere in sight. Ronnie gave the Palestinians a card of the Center for the Defense of the Individual, manned by people who are fluent in Arabic. Unfortunately, it was too early to get anybody on the phone yet.We continued on our inspection tour and arrived at a garage. Rachel and I asked a service man if we could use the bathroom. He handed us the key without the trace of a smile. Clearly, he would have loved to refuse, but chose to be wise rather than honest: too many soldiers around. When we returned to Ronnie, we found her in animated conversation with an orthodox Muslim woman sitting in the driver’s seat of her car. They were exchanging phone numbers. “You have no idea who this woman is,” Ronnie told us after we had left the garage. “For the last fourteen years, she and her husband have been living in San Francisco, where they both studied for their Ph.D. But three years ago, they came on a visit, and one day, when they stood in line at a checkpoint, she saw me at MachsomWatch. Leaving her car, she came up to me with tears in her eyes, saying that she had completely forgotten that some Jews are good. In the meantime, she and her husband have returned home, but it so happens that they and their relatives live on different sides of the fence. I would never have recognized her; three years ago, she dressed American style, and now she dresses like an orthodox woman. But she recognized me, and would love to meet me over a cup of coffee.” Like so many times I was impressed by the goodwill Ronnie spreads around her wherever she goes.We talked to some Palestinian men who were sitting on the sidewalk. They said that nobody was bothering them in particular, but that they were idling away their time since they had no work and no chance to find any on the eve of a Jewish holiday. On my way home, I saw another surprise checkpoint near the market. The only Palestinian I saw was a very old Palestinian woman, bent double with age or arthritis, and dragging an open box with scanty belongings on a rope. She shuffled through the checkpoint unbothered.