Abu Dis and SawahreWed. 29.12.04 Rachel M; Levana R.; Hava B.; (a guest) Ruthi R, reporting. We decided to start at Abu Dis rather than, as usual, at Sawahre, chiefly because we wanted to know how things have been going with the schoolchildren now that cabs and buses no longer wait in front of the wicket. We arrived before 07:00. From within the village, near the wicket wall, we were greeted by the strident and frightening siren of a jeep's. And why not? It makes sense that, at 7:00 in the morning, no one be quiet, or, heaven forfend, sleep peacefully in his own house. The jeep speeds on its way. The street is almost empty of people. A number of detainees stand near the monastery wall. Several Border Police stand nearby. A non-detainee tells us that some of the detainees have blue identity cards as well as work permits, which were taken from them / confiscated. I asked the commanding officer about the detainees and our conversation quickly heated up, partly by my doing. He said he would explain later. Everyone who comes through the monastery gate is searched; many are turned back. The previous jeep returns to the plaza outside the monastery. I ask the officer sitting in it about the detainees. He explains it isn't his responsibility, that I must talk to someone else. The officer who promised to talk to us "later" doesn't understand that I mean it when I ask him not to call me "NESHAMA" (honey?) but nonetheless somehow manages to address me as GVERET (ma'am).Our conversation with him proceeds as was predictable. We stand around him and he sounds off. He is considerate of the population. For example, when old women turn up, or someone who really can't walk, he lets them through. They – the Border Police – are in a hard place. Even the householders through whose yards they / the people in transit pass complain surrepticiously and the people in the monastery resent the pedestrian traffic. Everyone dumps on the Border Police. Everyone, but everyone, complains about them. The residents must use a new crossing-place at Az-Za'ayyem, "ten minutes' walk from here."We decide to go see this new crossing. You reach it by tortuous byways, on a path hard to negotiate by car. In the end, we missed the path leading up to the crossing. Clearly, the way is not short and unpaved as well.We stopped at the Az-Za'ayyem checkpost and asked the guards to show us the crossing for the transits. They pointed to the hill opposite, beyond the barbed-wire barrier.On the way to Sawahre we passed the concrete barriers which cordoned off with chains last week, and when we reached the barriers at the entrance to Kedar, we saw that they were blocked so that we had no way to reach the container. It was apparently decided last week that it would be best to close the barrier as a way of more effectively preventing security-threatening "elements" (female as well as male!) from getting through. I find it hard to find words to describe this process of cutting Abu Dis off from Jerusalem, which is being effectuated even without completion of the material fence. From week to week the "wicket" area grows emptier. Cars hardly pass through it; garbage and stones pile up in a place which hummed with people, children, vehicles. The curb facing the little wicket wall, like the curb of the entire road which leads to the wicket wall, is marked in red and white: NO PARKING. Silence reigns near the gas station, which was once at the center of the village, and all the shops are shuttered.