Bethlehem, Etzion DCL, Sun 22.5.11, Morning

Bethlehem - Checkpoint 300, 7:10 am:  we found that on our side of the checkpoint there were only a few workers waiting(to be inspected). This time there was good news : passage through the checkpoint was smooth this morning and everyone had already passed through.  Inside, there were still four windows open and meager but rapid passage of people.

      07:55 am, Etzion DCL:  the door was already open, only a few people already inside.  A laborer with a hand-wound, whose arm and hand were properly bandaged, came to ask for an entry permit for continuation of his treatment at the Mukasad hospital. (He was injured at his place of work inside the Palestinian Authority and that is the reason that he did not get the permission). We helped him to go to the top of the queue, but by 08.50 no-one had come-out from being questioned inside.

We met our old friend Juliette who had arrived with her daughter-in-law who had come to apply for a new magnetic card. Juliette doesn’t work already because of bad health, but she was very happy to meet us again.

A young man from Silwan, who has a blue ID certificate, complained that his wife (he has been married for about 13 years) has had to live with her parents in Dehaishe for two years already because of her GSS-exclusion due to her brother’s imprisonment because of security concerns.  The couple have 5 children, of whom 3 live with the father, an Egged driver,.  The youger children, a pair of twins 3 ½ years old, live with the wife.  They see each-other only once a month.. In the past, for a period of 11 years, he had a family reunion permit. He did not ask for our help.

09.00am  We left the checkpoint in order to meet people in Nabi Yunis, but in the end nothing came out of this.