Afternoon

Aram it was quiet, and business-like. We passed north at Qalandya, but when trying to return south, there were sounds of gunshots. Immediately the passage southward was stopped (but not the northbound traffic), and an older soldier with a heavy Russian accent pointed his gun at the crowd (among whom we were standing) and shouted hysterically: "Move back, move back". The people did, but they were totally non-plussed. After some time we found out that soldiers had chased after and caught three Palestinians trying to cross through Tora Bora, and brought them back with hands cuffed behind their back. The soldiers started scolding them ("Why do you break the law? You are a lawyer you say? And you break the law?"). They took them into a budke, and we were not allowed to approach. But we saw no physical brutality. Quite some time after this, the checkpoint was reopened, after a total downtime of about 40 minutes. When it was my turn to pass, an older soldier with a beard was checking IDs. People had been waved through pretty rapidly after the reopening. But this guy took one look at the ID and one look at me, and started ranting, without my having uttered a single word: "You are a Jew hater. You are here to tattle on us. Show me your bag, I will look at every item one by one, enjoying the fact that this keeps everyone waiting. You hate Jews, so I will punish you by holding up the people you want tohelp until I go through everything in your bag". And indeed he made me empty my rather skimpy bag, including the wallet and the little sac in it, while ranting on and on about how I was a Jew hater, and how my punishment would be that he would stop checking the Palestinians. Finally another soldier, much younger, intervened, and I was let through. I stopped to wait for my companion, and the older guy started in again: Move away, or I will not check anyone till you do. I said I was with another person who had not crossed yet, and the younger soldier said "So wait for her here", but the older one was still ranting that until I move out all the way, he would check no one. That's what your presence does to your friends", he kept saying. Of course I moved away. Needless to say, My companion then got the same treatment and the same lecture: "I will make sure that you hurt the people you want to help. I will delay you and delay them". Finally she too was let through, too. The waiting people were too far away to hear any of this exchange, and of course assumed (rightly) that we were being harrassed, so far from being angry at us, they were very sympathetic, offering words of comfort such as "The soldiers are sadists. They are fascist. They enjoy making us wait". The district commander and his aide did not answer the phone, and I lodged a complaint with the command. In 18 months at the checkpoint, never had I seen anything like this even towards Palestinians. Of course I have seen brutality and arbitrariness, but never accompanied by an open confession that this was abuse for the joy of abuse. Passing back home through E-Ram after 5pm it was dark, quiet, no lines, hardly any people.