Abu Dis and environs Sunday 16 January 2005 PMObservers: Hagit S., Ilana H. & Amira K. (reporting)+ Guest 14:45 – The Hotel – now completely fenced in by barbed-wire. Impassable. No Border Police inside the hotel.15:00 – 16:30 – Near the former Pishpash gate. The only way to cross now is through the monastery gate. When we arrived the gate was closed and guarded by two Border Police soldiers who prevented passage in both directions. Dozens of people, mostly women and children, were denied passage. Our attempts to get the soldiers to clarify the opening and closing “regulations” were unsuccessful. We saw people trying to find other ways of crossing. The soldiers pursued some of them, and brought them back. People were told, in Hebrew accompanied by hand gestures, to go to “Ras Abu Zibtan” and cross there. They refused to explain to three waiting women where it is and how to get there – everyone knows, the soldiers maintained. The street leading up to the pishpash gate and from there on, which was once a parking-lot place for dozens of buses, is now empty, and the pavement marked in red & white stripes – i.e., a no parking zone. Drivers who stopped to let passengers off were reprimanded, asked to present their papers and delayed for some time. People who arrived via the gate told us that a quarter of an hour before we arrived it had been opened, and was indeed usually open, only closing now and then for no apparent reason. 16:00 – The commander of the guard, Z., who had been summoned by his soldiers, ordered the gate to be opened – he decides when the gate will be opened or closed, he said, adding that “everyone is a terrorist until I check him”. Including the women and children.While the gate was closed, we noticed a few people walking towards a backyard near the wall. Watched by the Border Police soldiers, they disappeared from view. We took a close look, and saw that between two backyards there’s a wall, around two metres high, over which people of all ages clambered and then jumped off on the other side – an endeavour calling for immense effort.This absurd situation is about to change, Z. told us, on January 20, when all these crossings will be closed and no vans or buses will be allowed access here. Everyone will have to go through the “legal” crossing” – we don’t yet know whether it’s in Ras Abu Zibtan or Az-Zaim. 14:30 – The Container – a long line of cars towards Bethlehem; the checks were not over-long. Pedestrians crossed without being checked.