Qalandiya
A difficult morning at Qalandiya. Since 5:15, the hour of our arrival, the queue spreads out and reaches the rear of the shed. All the turnstiles are open. All the passages are active.
Towards 5:45 some youngsters begin pushing and climbing on the fences. The atmosphere becomes quickly heated. Older men and women flee from the queue. We signal to the soldier in the aquarium that there is a dangerous tension. According to our estimation a quicker admittance of the workers and a bigger number would solve the tension. We get the impression that the soldier does not comply. It seems to us that he is busy with his cellular phone. He doesn't bother to check the situation outside. A heavy misgiving creeps into our heart. All the passages are active. Passage 3 isn't active for some minutes.
At six o'clock the soldier in the aquarium is changed by a girl soldier, who immediately complies with our requests to increase the stream of people who pass. Passage 3 is active again. The girl soldier comes out of the aquarium to check the situation outside. She hears from us a short report and promises to take care of the matter. And indeed she does. I don't remember that we were accorded such a treatment in the past.
At 6:15 the humanitarian passage is opened. The soldier who opens it is flabbergasted like us when he sees the situation in the shed. He takes photos. Later he tries to deter the pushing people in the enclosure with the claim that he won't let them pass.
A Palestinian worker takes the initiative. He doesn't allow the gate- crushers to enter and the atmosphere calms down. The queues again reach the end of the square but the passage is quick and around 7:30 everything calms down.
In the unpleasant tumult, a women who is seemingly not sane of mind turns around. It may be that she is drunk or under the influence of drugs. She pesters the people present with talk, songs, questions in Arabic, and in broken Hebrew and English. She claims that her name is Rima Ayub, that she lives in Ramalla and that she wants to work. She doesn't pass by the enclosure and becomes a source of amusement and derision. People try to convince her to go home. To no avail. This is not the first time that I meet her at the CP.
A worker who wants to immigrate to the United States asks for our help in deleting a criminal annotation which was given to him following the forgery of papers. At the moment he has a legal passage permit. We refer him to Sylvia.
The square is relatively clean compared to the filth we saw here two weeks ago. The toilets are in a serious condition.
Qalandiya Checkpoint / Atarot Pass (Jerusalem)
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Click here to watch a video from Qalandiya checkpoint up to mid 2019 Three kilometers south of Ramallah, in the heart of Palestinian population. Integrates into "Jerusalem Envelope" as part of Wall that separates between northern suburbs that were annexed to Jerusalem in 1967: Kafr Aqab, Semiramis and Qalandiya, and the villages of Ar-Ram and Bir Nabala, also north of Jerusalem, and the city itself. Some residents of Kafr Aqab, Semiramis and Qalandiya have Jerusalem ID cards. A terminal operated by Israel Police has functioned since early 2006. As of August 2006, northbound pedestrians are not checked. Southbound Palestinians must carry Jerusalem IDs; holders of Palestinian Authority IDs cannot pass without special permits. Vehicular traffic from Ramallah to other West Bank areas runs to the north of Qalandiya. In February 2019, the new facility of the checkpoint was inaugurated aiming to make it like a "border crossing". The bars and barbed wire fences were replaced with walls of perforated metal panels. The check is now performed at multiple stations for face recognition and the transfer of an e-card. The rate of passage has improved and its density has generally decreased, but lack of manpower and malfunctions cause periods of stress. The development and paving of the roads has not yet been completed, the traffic of cars and pedestrians is dangerous, and t the entire vicinity of the checkpoint is filthy. In 2020 a huge pedestrian bridge was built over the vehicle crossing with severe mobility restrictions (steep stairs, long and winding route). The pedestrian access from public transport to the checkpoint from the north (Ramallah direction) is unclear, and there have been cases of people, especially people with disabilities, who accidentally reached the vehicle crossing and were shot by the soldiers at the checkpoint. In the summer of 2021, work began on a new, sunken entrance road from Qalandiya that will lead directly to Road 443 towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. At the same time, the runways of the old Atarot airport were demolished and infrastructure was prepared for a large bus terminal. (updated October 2021)
Tamar FleishmanFeb-27-2026Qalandiya: On the way to prayer
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