Qalandiya, Tue 5.4.11, Morning

Long lines and crowding in the cage-like “sleeves” of the pedestrian checkpoint when we reach Qalandiya at 5:50 a.m.  (Cars are also already backed up at this hour.) We take the number of one of the men on line and call him at 7:00, when he tells us he has just come out the other side. Passage time: 1 hour and 10 minutes.  The pace through the revolving gates is far swifter than it has been in the past few weeks. By 7:30 all three sleeves are empty!

The Humanitarian Gate opens for the first time at 6:30, by which time there is already a large crowd waiting. (It’s quite cold and wet this morning.) People who have been waiting since before 6:00 tell us that they are accustomed to the gate opening for the first time at 6:10. But the hours during which the gate operates are not posted on it – which would be quite helpful and enable people to plan more rationally. After 6:30, the gate is opened every 10-15 minutes, so that the pace of movement is fairly regular and there is hardly any crowding.

Two men approach us with complaints about the checkpoint for people with Jerusalem identity cards and green “seam” cards (located to the right of the passage for cars as you face Jerusalem). The first man is accompanied by his three children, all of elementary school age. He complained that, after waiting for close to an hour on a minibus in the checkpoint traffic jam, he and the children were removed from the bus told that they must go by foot through the Humanitarian Gate. He said that this has never happened to him before, and he has no explanation for it.

Soon afterward, a second man, with a green “seam” ID, told us that he (likewise for the first time) was turned away at the checkpoint for Jerusalem and “seam” residents and told to go through the main checkpoint because his name does not appear in the computer. We advised him to immediately take this issue to the DCO.

At 7:30 we move over to the Jerusalem-“seam line” facility to check out events there. We board a minibus for the obligatory 20-meter ride to the checkpoint and disembark. The line before the revolving gate is not very long, but the gate doesn’t open very often. All together, from the time we board the bus to the time we exit the checkpoint takes 50 minutes. We notice, however, that few people are leaving the minibuses bound for Jerusalem. In most cases, two or uniformed Israelis enter a bus and presumably check documents before allowing it to pass through the checkpoint. The criteria for who is permitted to remain on the bus and who is removed and told to go on foot through the main or Jerusalem-“seam” checkpoint is unclear.