At the wall the passage is dangerous, people of all ages and physical conditions climb over all sorts of unstable barricades up and down the wall which is about 2 meters high. A BP jeep was checking some IDs in front of the wall while the others passed undisturbed. The jeep left shortly after our arrival. We didn’t find any the note notifying people to use the new passage at the metal gate, as mentioned by RH. yesterday. The passage looks even worse from the other side.THE PASSAGE AT THE METAL GATE: This passage is few hundred meters before the wall, turn to a street with the sign “SISTERS of NIGRIZI-COMBONI SISTERS”. At the end of this street there is a metal gate which goes to the western side of Abu Dis. We took this gate to walk back to the western side of the wall, it is a long walk (15-20 minutes). We took a transit taxi to Sawahra-Wadi Nar, the road is not safe so pay attention to choose the riable looking drivers as ours was a dangerous one. At the container no checkpoint, so we drove further down to the chekpoint southern to the gas pump. The driver dropped us quite a distance before the checkpoint. What we saw was a mass of people about few hundreds climbing up the very steepy road all prespiring heavily and no taxis around to serve. This was strange and we didn’t understand why the taxis didn’t go all the way to the gas pump where they are allowed to park. It seems that there was today an interval when they couldn’t or didn’t want to drive the whole way. So marching down we stopped to talk to the pedesterians coming up, most of them men, many students in Abu Dis coming back from weekend at home. Everybody talked about spending three four hours on the way from Hebron or Bethlehem going through three to six checkpoints.The checkpoint: -Two jeeps, eight soldiers, behaving civilly and not abusive. They were cheking every pedesterian and passenger ID. Blue ID’s cannot pass one way or the other,those must use Etzion checkpoint. Almost everybody passed,few were waiting for further ID checking at the jeep. Checking wasn’t very quick or efficient but not deliberatly slow either, usually the passengers from the taxis got out and approached the BP soldier for ID check, and so from time to time there were large groups of people waiting. Not many people going to Bethlehem direction and those passed quickly with no checking. We talked to the checkpoint commader Andre using a rather flattering manner and he answered our questions. The checkpoint is there 24 hours a day, sometimes it is settled on different spots along the road. As I mentioned before, no blue ID’s are allowed to pass, but one young student going to his exam at Bethlehem was allowed finally to pass when we pretended not to look. Andre said that for special demands or complains we should adress EDRIE HABIB ” Abudis pluga commander” tel:056 444431. On our way back we took the transit from near the checkpoint, he took us to the metal gate which we used to pass to go back to the car, we didn’t feel fit or adventerous enough to climb over the wall.