Abu Dis: Initially things were quiet at with a steady stream of people, many of them school children and students but also including many “just folks”, clambering over the perilous pile of stones that leads up to the recently breached hole in the wall that divides the town into two. We heard later that, probably because of Holocaust Memoriaol Day, no cars were being allowed through and that some drivers had tried — apparently unsuccessfully– to circumvent the check points by driving through Eizariye. The border police patrol on the path up to the now-being-renovated hotel rudely forbade us to videofilm.Wadi Nar: Border Police had set up their check-post today alongside the “Container-Kiosk”. As we arrived, a taxi driven by the holder of a blue ID was stopped from passing because some of the passengers were not in possession of the necessary. The particular permit needed here had to be re-applied for each month and was only granted in special cases (at the discretion of the local officers)– all just to travel from one village to another within Area B! This requirement — in force for about a year– was taken at a senior level, maybe even a political level. Kravitz said that BPs at the check-points do have some discretion in the matter of whom they allowed through. Meanwhile, the passengers of another taxi — four women students and one male student — were asked to prove their status. All five showed magnetic student passes and were allowed through– a good example of the leeway the BP enjoy. As one man put it to us, “The soldiers don’t enforce the law of the government but their own law, and we never know where we are”. The line at the checkpoint stretched back down the steep, windy road for what seemed to be at least thirty vehicles, with each one taking about five minutes to go passed the BP. Their check of vehicles and passengers was business-like, thorough and quiet. A number of pedestrians — presumably lacking the permits — were scrambling up the hillside quite openly and in full sight of the BPs, who made no attempt to halt them. As we left, the son of the owner of the kiosk came up to us and complained that the soldiers had this week forced his father — a man of seventy who still has children to support–to close the kiosk. “How is he supposed to make a living?” the son asked. “And what is he supposed to have done, a man of seventy? What are we supposed to have done? We have never thrown stones, never done anything!”