Morning

The wall is now twice as high and has barbed wire on the top (we saw one very skinny little boy cross between the concrete blocks with his schoolbag). Halfway up the street toward the mosque, a Border Policenik checks papers and lets the Blue ID’s proceed, but the orange and green ones with permits have to register with a soldier seated at the bottom of the wall. The jump into the broken stones at the bottom of the wall is a real safety hazard and a sure impediment for all but the most fit. A teacher at the French Lycee on Nevi’im Street crosses daily. She was told that the police had promised to ease the passage along the mosque, but had done nothing about it. She told us that on the top of the road beyond the University there are a few houses, which geographically belong to Ras El Amud, and it is easy to walk through one of the gardens to get to the other side. From the top there is an good view of whatever is happening at the bottom so men without permits do not even attempt to proceed downward but there is a way through the compound of the Monastery of Notre Dame des Douleurs. Usually one person climbs the tall green fence and pushes the button in the wall on the inside to open the gate for the others. We saw about 20 detainees whose papers needed to be checked. The soldier did not let us get near them (“You are disturbing us in our work”), but Y sneakingly managed to leave a card of the Moked on the wall in the hope that one of them would be able to get it. They were in the shade and had not been there too long, but when we left about half an hour later they were still there.In Bethany (El Azariya) there was a checkpoint manned by Border Policeniks. All car numbers and the ID-numbers of all passengers were written down. It was not clear why.