'Anin, Reihan, Shaked, Thu 6.10.11, Afternoon
Stories of Two Children
15:05 A'anin CP – First Story
The gates
of the CP are open. About ten people, two tractors and one donkey are waiting to go through to the village after a day's work. During the olive-picking season the CP is open daily in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon. The hours are: 05:30-06:30, 12:00 – 13:00, 15:00 – 16:30. This is something of an improvement over previous years. Some people, most of them young, arrive and go through immediately. They complain that they received permits only for one month. We gave an older man three bags of used clothing, not very big bags. Every pair of pants and every shirt was inspected on the ground. A well-dressed child arrives at the CP without a parent accompanying him. The soldiers ask every person going through if they know the child and if they can call his father to come to the CP with the child's birth certificate. A few try to phone the father. There is no answer. The soldiers also make phone calls to some place or another. The child without no certificate does not go through.
15:50 – At long last they find the father. Within ten minutes the father arrives without the child's birth certificate, and the child is not listed in his ID either. The father and the child shake hands and the child returns to the seamline zone, where a car is already waiting for him. It turns out that the child lives with his mother, an Israeli citizen in Umm el Fahem. He wanted to visit his father, but did not succeed. At least they met and shook hands in the CP. Two sweet little girls riding a donkey go up to the Bedouin village at the foot of the CP. They continue to ride and meet their grandmother who is sitting under the tree at the end of the road that leads to the CP.
16:10 Shaked-Tura CP
Very little traffic in both directions. A driver goes to be inspected and in the meantime a sheep waits quietly in the back of his pickup truck. The driver leaves the inspection hut and says that this evening he will have (the sheep) roasted on a campfire.
16:30 Reihan-Barta'a (seamline zone side) and the Second Story
Dozens of workers come down the sleeve together with us to the opening of the terminal. Opposite us some women students are coming up to spend the weekend in the seamline zone. We are afraid that there will be a terribly long queue, but to our surprise, the queue is not too long and the passage is quick. Two windows are operating. One of them is for those going from the West Bank to the seamline zone. Six detainees sit on a bench. Four women and six children join the queue. The men who are waiting let them go ahead.
17:00 People keep arriving and there is no queue. One of the detainees is allowed to go on his way and when we go up the sleeve again, a man asks to speak to us. His five-year-old son is a lifeguard at a pool! 'Soon he will be listed in the Guiness Book of Records', says his proud father. He himself is a resident of Ya'abed and he has a business in East Barta'a and also a swimming pool in Ya'abed where he is also a lifeguard. He taught his son how to swim and to be a lifeguard – on his telephone screen he shows us a TV program about his son, the young lifeguard. The child has a dream, to get to the sea and his father tried to get him a one-time permit to enter Israel for this purpose. But he did not get it. He heard too late about the days at sea and the trips that took place in the summer. The entrance fee for the pool is NIS 15, 10 for a small child. The only swimmers are little girls and boys. One day a week is for girls. There is a bit of a life in Palestine, but no trips to the sea.