Qalandiya

A difficult morning at Qalandiya. Since 5:15, the hour of our arrival, the queue spreads out and reaches the rear of the shed. All the turnstiles are open. All the passages are active.

 

Towards 5:45 some youngsters begin pushing and climbing on the fences. The atmosphere becomes quickly heated. Older men and women flee from the queue. We signal to the soldier in the aquarium that there is a dangerous tension. According to our estimation a quicker admittance of the workers and a bigger number would solve the tension. We get the impression that the soldier does not comply. It seems to us that he is busy with his cellular phone. He doesn't bother to check the situation outside. A heavy misgiving creeps into our heart. All the passages are active. Passage 3 isn't active for some minutes.

 

At six o'clock the soldier in the aquarium is changed by a girl soldier, who immediately complies with our requests to increase the stream of people who pass. Passage 3 is active again. The girl soldier comes out of the aquarium to check the situation outside. She hears from us a short report and promises to take care of the matter. And indeed she does. I don't remember that we were accorded such a treatment in the past.

 

At 6:15 the humanitarian passage is opened. The soldier who opens it is flabbergasted like us when he sees the situation in the shed. He takes photos. Later he tries to deter the pushing people in the enclosure with the claim that he won't let them pass.

 

A Palestinian worker takes the initiative. He doesn't allow the gate- crushers to enter and the atmosphere calms down. The queues again reach the end of the square but the passage is quick and around 7:30 everything calms down.

 

In the unpleasant tumult, a women who is seemingly not sane of mind turns around. It may be that she is drunk or under the influence of drugs. She pesters the people present with talk, songs, questions in Arabic, and in broken Hebrew and English. She claims that her name is Rima Ayub, that she lives in Ramalla and that she wants to work. She doesn't pass by the enclosure and becomes a source of amusement and derision. People try to convince her to go home. To no avail. This is not the first time that I meet her at the CP.

 

A worker who wants to immigrate to the United States asks for our help in deleting a criminal annotation which was given to him following the forgery of papers. At the moment he has a legal passage permit. We refer him to Sylvia.

 

The square is relatively clean compared to the filth we saw here two weeks ago. The toilets are in a serious condition.