Qalandiya, Mon 1.7.13, Afternoon

We reached Qalandiya at 15:50.  Thre passageways were open but, for the first time in a long while, there were lines of 10 people waiting in each passageway and waiting time was quite long.  We phoned one of the officers to ask what was happening and Amir told us, quite expectedly, that a new unit was on duty and the soldiers were learning the job and working slowly.

In one of the passageways, a 16 year-old girl (i.e. old enough to have her own ID card) was standing in front of the soldiers in the "aquarium" while her mother had gotten stuck in the turnstile.  The girl was holding her mother's ID card and a photocopy of her own birth certificate (required of kids under 16).  The soldiers were giving her a hard time, insisting that when they asked her how old she was she had lied about her age, etc.  We phoned the DCO Representative and tried to have her talk to the girl's mother but the mother refused.  In the end the soldiers called the police (3 appeared on the scene) who took the girl and her mother for questioning.  We didn't see when they emerged and what happened.