Afternoon

Qalandya South: Hardly a queue for cars, which are passed quickly. No check for pedestrains.Qalandya North: A very long line of cars. The pedestrian queue is not very long and people are checked in a correct and rather quick manner, especially by a young female soldier who let some people pass through although they do not have the permit. A large group of detained people, most of them caught at Tora Bora, among them a young couple with orange IDs. The woman said she had seen a doctor in Ramallah after a miscarriage, and they tried Tora Bora after being denied passage. They were caught, along with the others, and had been waiting for their IDs for over 2 hours. She claimed to live just south of the checkpoint. She showed various documents in 100% Arabic. The older volunteer soldier (a teacher from Kibbutz Mizra, he said) claimed that because of our presence, he had to go "by the book", otherwise he might have been more flexible... Their IDs were returned, but passage still denied. He finally said that if she brings a letter from her doctor in English, they would let her through. The couple headed back to Ramallah in despair. The other detainess also had to turn back when their IDs were returned. An ambulance (no patients, just the driver and the daughter of an International volunteer physician) was detained because the soldiers found in it a printed material (with a picture of a pregnant woman in a checkpoint and text in Arabic) and decided it was incitement propaganda. The driver tried to explain that it was just an information leaflet for people needing an ambulance when at a checkpoint. It took over half an hour till an Arabic speaking IDF officer came by, and confirmed the harmlessness of the printed material, and let the ambulance through with the leaflets. During the first 10 minutes, the ambulance was stopped in its tracks, thus blocking all car passage, but then it was moved aside.Jaba'a: A makeshift checkpoint, but no lineup, vehicles were passing in either direction rapidly, with just a cursory check.