Tarqumiya

Tarqumiya Thursday 13.1.05 PMObservers Hagit B., Elena L (reporting in English).When we arrived the workers were going through from the Israel in small groups as their transit vans drew up. There was no queue and the workers were not checked by the soldiers. They simply walked through the CP. When we asked if we could cross to the Palestinian side the CO of the CP said : "You can do whatever you want to do" . He was very friendly and helpful.We heard a soldier with a Russian accent , standing in the booth, shouting to another soldier up in the pillbox: "Don’t call him 'maniac'" (in Hebrew this is a very impolite mode of address). I didn’t hear the soldier in the pillbox and I didn’t see whom he had addressed , but as I was standing next to the soldier with the Russian accent, I told him : "Nice of you to say that " and he replied: "It's only right and proper". One worker we spoke to said there had been problems early in the morning at Sansana CP . We asked the CO of Tarqumiya CP what could cause problems for workers there (on their way into Israel) and he said that if a Palestinian carried a permit to work, for example in Rehovot, and turned up at Sansana CP in the Negev (not far from Beersheba), the soldiers there would be suspicious – in other words, we learned that since work permits state where the holder is employed, the place of his employment determines the CP he ought to go through. Shortly before reaching Tarqumiya CP we saw on the crest of the hills to the south 2 bulldozers working on the wall, which was visible from the road.