South and West Hebron Hills Thursday morning, 28 October 2004Watchers: Mira B, Yeela (reporting in English) Hagit B (reporting in Hebrew)Left at 6:30 am. Returned at 11:45 am.General: because of lack of time we drove only on Rd 60 and Rd 35. (we did not go to Hirbat Tawani), and on the Palestinian roads – on the way to Beit Awa. The army is in the pillboxes – Dura – Al-Fawwar, Shayuch-Seir, Halhul bridge. The girls’ school – there is no military and as usual crossing Rd 60 is extremely dangerous. At Dura and al-Fawwar – we met a school principal (woman) who talked to us in English, and also showed us that the crossing is dangerous to pedestrians, as they must share a single lane with cars when going through the barricade. A pedestrian crossing needs to be opened at that spot. At the Sheep Jct. a taxi driver complained that his papers were taken. others complained about a certain military jeep crew that seemed to enjoy making them sit on the ground, taking their papers and driving away, only to return two hours later, making them go from one place to another, and they even tore up one driver’s license papers. They gave us the jeep’s license #; we will try and see what we can find out and help.The road section that is open only to pedestrians is exceptionally long, and we need to ask the military to allow taxis to get closer to the road, so that the women with children in their arms, old people, and others do not need to suffer so much.East Halhul-Seir – a serious traffic jam. a jeep of Border Plice and a jeep of Nahal soldiers are doing random checks of IDs. (They are not the reason for the traffic jam, rather the fact that at the barricade only one car from each direction can pass at any time)Halhul bridge – the entrance from Rd 35 is blocked again.On Rd 35 there electric works are in process, installing road lamps to illuminate Beit Hagai jct. and the barricade in al Jura. Soldiers are securing the electricity workers, no one is detained.Beit Awa – we scheduled a meeting with the council chair and M., the town lawyer. We arrived at the town via dirt roads, as we did not want to cross through Idna, the children throw stones there at Israeli cars. The roads are in bad shape, we understood the anger of the Palestinians, at the prohibition on using the available good roads. M. told us it took him 8 hours to drive to Ramallah – what ordinarily would be a two hour drive, because of the need to drive through these long and difficult roads, and because of the road blocks on the way. M. took us to see the layout of the [Separation Fence] wall. The Israeli Supreme Court ordered a halt to the constrction of the wall. The petition is given by three towns by the Green Line: Beit Awa, Sika and Kum. Amir Fishbein is their representative, we will contact him to see how we can help. Instead of directly on the Green Line, which would also be a natural location, as it is along the wadi [ravine], the wall is planned to be built 300 meters into Palestinian territory and 25 meters from the town’s school, and directly on top of the graveyard. It is not reasonable and not understandable. There already is a road along the Green Line, so why is so much money being spent on building this new one? There is already the difficult and distressing sight of uprooted olive trees. We promised to visit again, and to do all we can to publicize their predicament to the Israeli public. Summary – So few people moving about? Where is everybody?