Bethlehem, Fri 18.12.09, Morning
Bethlehem Checkpoint: wind howls through the checkpoint. It’s very cold and a few Palestinians wait inside for their relatives who haven’t yet come out.
The situation is not much better than last week: people still come out in a dribble, but it is clear that on the other side a great many are waiting.
On the Israeli side, two stations are open and people are passing without delays. The soldiers are completely indifferent to the fact that many are waiting on the other side. They are also completely indifferent to the suffering of two children who arrived with parents (each separately) but with documentation in Arabic. Neither their tears nor my plea to exercise some judgement or to let me translate the document – nothing helped and they were forced to go back the way they had come, crying in disappointment and certainly in terrible anger after all their long wait.
I approach one of the soldiers about the possibility of speeding up transitfrom the other side. He goes up to the roof and sees that there are indeed many waiting, and he decides to send whoever is taking a break over there. And the flow starts to be more meaningful.