Afternoon

Qalandya south, 3.30 PMDense atmosphere, many people, cars, in and out of the line, a lot of hustle bustle, lively and ominous interweaving, an unusual number of soldiers, some seem high ranks by their looks, and in the background, an incessant roar of a bulldozer establishing some new concrete 'thing'...We see soldiers ordering of the Transits parking too close to the checkpoint to move further down the road (towards Jab'a). The soldier draws an imaginary line in the air with his hands, to establish this new arbitrary line, and all the Transits start backing out. we realize suddenly quite surprised that the yellow Palestinian plate taxis parked further down were not approached or abused.We walk towards tora-bora which is permanently sealed, two breaks in the barbed wire with a few people passing. The wider entrance for cars blocked completely, no cars can pass through. Coming back, we see that the soldiers ordered a boy selling rolls, to move from one place to another.Qalandya north, 4.20 PM.Many soldiers, border police too. A woman crying bitterly, her gaze riveted on the soldiers who pay no attention to her, we had assumed her ID was not returned to her, but she only speaks Arabic and won't submit to our attempts to comfort her. To our plea the soldier said that in due time her ID will be returned. It turned out however they hadn't confiscated her ID at all, they 'just' lost some school certificate. I'm not sure whether she is a student or a teacher... and that they had said to her that it is lost and that's that. She, not accepting this 'verdict', just stood there crying, but eventually, perhaps after more than an our of this futile heartbreaking wail, she just walked away. It takes a car half an hour of wait before passing southwards, but this is way after the fast has been broken, and there is less traffic, which means it was much longer before. People seem to pass relatively smoothly, no extreme behavior, just the 'usual' checkpointness...Qalandya south, 5.20 PM, no electricity where the checking occurs. Other than the woman no pedestrians, still a long line of cars, 5.50 we leave.E-Ram, a long line of cars towards Jerusalem.