Qalandiya - no queues, no delays
A 'reasonable' morning in Qalandiya. We continue to park on the Palestinian side because due to the works on the Israeli side there is no place to park there. We arrived around six. Our first stop is at our friend Abu Ramzi, the pretzel seller. He is fine, but his mood has been low since his wife's death. It's hard to live without a wife, he says.
Near him there is a falafel stand with other foods that operates as usual, then the kiosk and after that stands the cake seller. In the nearby square, there is now another kiosk, in the place where there was an old fruit and vegetable stand, which used to open later, and which the city inspectors destroyed a few months ago.
In the checkpoint complex itself, there were no queues under the shed or outside it during our entire stay. The three entrances were open all the time and the many people who arrived entered immediately without delay. This time, too, the woman arrived with the toddler in a stroller. She went to the stand next to the gate that could be opened to the passage without turnstiles and rang the phone. We went over to talk to her. She said that the boy is sick and she goes with him twice a week for treatment. We asked whom she was calling, did she have the phone number of someone at the checkpoint who should come to open it? It turns out that she calls the (Jewish) driver who is waiting for her on the Israeli side and drives them to the hospital (probably from The Road to Recovery). He is the one who has contact with the necessary people inside the checkpoint. After a few minutes, a security guard came from another direction and opened the gate for her. We saw a new yellow note on the gate that said it is a humanitarian transition for the sick.
The flow of people continued as usual both from the entrance to the checkpoint complex from the east and of young people climbing the fence from the direction of Qalandiya. Everyone entered immediately. But one of the people turns to us and says that two days ago there were queues that reached outside the entire checkpoint complex. We asked if this was due to a lack of soldiers inside and the answer was: "There are soldiers, but they are not helping." After he moved inside he called us from inside. I approached the carousel and saw that inside the hall was indeed very busy. Nevertheless, at no point did queues accumulate outside.
A little before seven I entered the checkpoint. Out of six checkpoints, five were open. The queues in front of them were short and within a few minutes, I passed. On the Israeli side, I watched from the bridge towards the works on the underpass, the bus parking lot and the bus terminal. The stations are covered, but the road from the bridge to them is not covered. A modern toilet building was placed at the end of the terminal (station area). Next time I may go down and check if this is indeed active.
When we got back to the car, we took pictures from the parking lot of the new road that was paved parallel to the existing road, where at this time the traffic in the direction of the vehicle barrier is sluggish. We drove through A-Ram towards the Jabba Binyamin intersection (Adam). When we got into the car, the news began to arrive about the attack at the entrance to Jerusalem. Before the intersection, the Jabba temporary checkpoint was manned and the soldiers photographed the Palestinian vehicles that passed by. After the checkpoint, we reached the intersection and turned to return to Jerusalem through Hizmeh. The traffic situation up to the Hizmeh checkpoint was reasonable, but the usual morning traffic jams started from Pisgat Zeev and later, due to the attack, they were even longer than usual.