Ar-Ram and Qalandiya Wednesday morning, 8.12.04Observers: Sylvia P. (filming), Anat T. (Reporting)6:40 – We traveled to Qalandiya first, in order to be there at the morning rush hours. It was cold and wet, and it looked like it was going to be even more wet. Many people trudge through slush and dirt started floating and splashing. The humanitarian path – exposed to the wind and rain - was very crowded as well as the queue in the turnstiles path where there was only one soldier checking. It was evident that the soldiers also were suffering from the rain and the wind. There was no officer in the checkpoint. The soldier in charge, a woman from the military police, refused to talk with us. We asked from another female soldier and from Emil, the DCO representative, to try and move the humanitarian path to the western side of the shed, where there are neither turnstiles nor rain. Emil tried, but the people in the queue didn’t understand, they thought that they were sent to full checking and prefered to stay under the rain. The soldiers didn’t collaborate. Only after the rain strengthened, they moved the humanitarian path under the shed, but on its eastern side, so the path included detector checking. It seemeds that the soldiers didn’t listen to the guidance or demands from the DCO representative concerning improvements in the checkpoint functioning, and he looked pretty frustrated.8:00 – Before traveling to Ar-Ram we tried to check with the merchants and the drivers if the infamous jeep 77 team hit again during the last few days. We got a quite ambiguous answer: yes, three days ago, this time without a jeep but on foot.8:10– At Ar-Ram there was no queue to the south. About the queue in the northern direction, a BP soldier explained that they were filling the police role and checking car documents in order to retrieve stolen cars. 8:30 – At Sho'afat Refugee Camp (the entrance to Anata) a BP soldier was checking an old lady with village clothes. The checking took a long time, and we saw the soldier filling a lot of forms. After he released her we asked him why she was so suspicious. He answered that he cannot explain to us but that there is a need for an intensive checking due to the place she is coming from.On our way back we tried to contact Sh., the head of Ramallah DCO, in order to discuss with him moving the humanitarian path under the shed during the winter and to ask about the actual hierarchy at the checkpoint vis a vis the DCO representative. We didn’t find him.