Shaked, Rihan, Saturday, May 6, 2006, AMObservers: Sarit A, Rachel C (reporting)07:25 – 10:00Shaked The gate is locked, and stays locked until 08:00. Children, youth and adults are waiting. We phone the Humanitarian Center every 5-10 minutes. Gilad is polite and helpful. He promises to check.At 08:00 a military vehicle arrives. The soldiers take positions, the gate is opened, the children shoot forward. The soldiers call them to halt. One by one they are checked against the list. The bigger children wait their turn. One of the students isn’t allowed to pass (he explains about his studies in Jenin, and about the shortening of the list of those permitted to pass this gate).A woman wasn’t allowed to pass. According to her, she received a phone call from the school that she must come because something has happened (perhaps to her child, perhaps to another child). We tried to help. Gilad said that he has to have a solid specific humanitarian reason. Shelly from the brigade said that if something really has happened to a child in school, the school would contact the Palestinian District Coordination Office, which who would contact the Israeli DCO, and then they would weigh the possibility of letting her pass.I repeated what the woman had said and asked if the school knew about that procedure. I was answered with the contention that I didn’t understand what she had said, and when I asked for additional explanation, she said she was forbidden to talk to me. Whatever the case, the soldiers started to shut the gates. The woman left, and so did we. Rihan, 08:45The area appears deserted. The soldiers also have nothing to do. We met a familiar seam line (IDF) volunteer (another popped up later) who greeted us: “You are bored?” Suggesting that so are they, we continued on our way. No one stopped us. We had a conversation with the Military Policeman controlling the entrance to the sleeve, and afterward with soldiers who seem very new here. We went over to the Palestinian parking lot, and were requested to go back to Israeli territory, with the reminder: “Commanding General’s orders,” so that it will be possible to defend us. We were told to stand by the gate where incoming cars are checked, and so we did. Traffic is very thin. There is no line. Two Military Policewomen, one screaming vulgarly “Shut up!!! Do you understand??!! Shut up I told you!!! Shut up or…” We came closer to see what sin had been commited, and were driven off: “Doesn’t matter where, just not here, and in any case we are forbidden to talk to you.”So again we walked to the building, inspected its immensity, tried to calculate costs, and chatted with the bored soldiers. When we were about to leave, we met a technician from the Palestinian telephone company. He and his partner had come to repair an old telephone line in Barta’a. He drew our attention to the way in which the cable drums on his vehicle were being inspected at the gate. The cables were unwound from the drums, and it would now take a long time to organize the cable where it was to be installed. In my opinion, the soldiers who spread it out should put it back again, though in the light of the screams of the two policewomen, it didn’t seem that the technician wanted our intervention.