Rihan, Wednesday, 12.7.06 AMObservers: Riki Y, Hassida S (reporting)Summary: very hot. Routine shift, annoying and depressing.08:00 – 10:20 Vehicle CheckpointTenders loaded with vegetables are offloading boxes and being inspected, vegetable by vegetable. Sometimes two tenders at once, sometimes only one. Occasionally private cars are checked in parallel. The soldiers are hostile. Someone who presented himself as checkpoint commander contends that he has no authority over the very unpleasant Military Policewoman who answers to the name “how d’you do” but only over the soldiers on the security detail.A 45-year-old man arrives at the vehicle checkpoint accompanied by his 15-year-old son. He has a permit, but the policewoman refuses to allow the boy to pass, even though he is listed in his father’s ID card. The policewoman directed the father to the DCO. No DCO representative is to be found at the checkpoint. On the phone the father himself is told, as am I, that the boy is entitled to pass, but the policewoman is adamant. She is not willing to talk to the DCO on the father’s phone. “Let the DCO phone me!” A DCO representative soon arrives, but the policewoman isn’t willing to listen to him. Finally, the father parks the car in the lot, passes through the pedestrian checkpoint with his son, then returns to take the car through. Left hand doesn’t know from the right! Tweedledum and Tweedledee! Both sides lose.All told, the vehicle crossing flows. Only trays of eggs have been lying two hours in the sun.At the Pedestrian Checkpoint:The taxi drivers in the Palestinian parking lot are lolling on chairs and blankets under the shady roof where a real “restaurant” is developing. Saaid and Walid have increased the supply of cold-hot drinks and candies. The gate opens for short spells, and closes for longer ones.At one point 15 people are waiting by the gate, among them an adult who says he is ill and finds it hard to wait in the sun, youngsters, women and children – all with permits to enter the seam zone. According to them they have already been waiting for an hour and a half. In my opinion, it’s not more than half an hour. I stand with them for ten minutes in the great heat, and I feel on my flesh how hard it is. I go in towards the sentry box and ask the soldier why he doesn’t open, but am driven back. I wait five minutes more then go to the other side of the box to say that it is very hot, that he should tell the people when he intends to open so they can wait in the sheltering roof. His response: “I can’t talk.” I go into the terminal in an attempt to speak to some commander, but a Military Policewoman shouts to a guard “Get her out!”About five minutes later, the gate opens and all pour in.Hot, exhausting and dispiriting. Doesn’t seem to me that this behaviour has anything to do with protecting the security of the State of Israel.