International Checkpoint Watch - Daily Observations

Date:            06/12/01                      Time:  11:00 - 14:30

Place Observed:  Qalandia

Number of Soldiers Present:  Eight soldiers and two jeeps.

Soldiers Names, ID #’s, License Plate #’s, Etc: 

Events Witnessed:

11:00 - 12:00-  (inbound, from Jerusalem to Ramallah)  Israeli soldiers detained/prevented the entry of 15 men, all with Jerusalem ID, for the entire hour. After the men left, the Israeli soldiers began letting some men with Jerusalem ID through.  Soldiers checked the ID of every man, regardless of age, and allowed most women through without showing ID, although soldiers stopped random women with children and searched their belongings.

12:00-  (inbound)  Soldier confiscated the ID of one young man.

12:00 - 13:00-  (inbound)  Israeli soldier forced one man (appx. 30 yrs. old) to read from a newspaper because, the soldier said, "I want to hear if my name is there." Israeli soldiers stopped and harrassed every man with a newspaper, before allowing them to pass.

13:30 - 14:30-  (outbound from Ramallah to Jerusalem)  An Israeli soldier refuses to allow eight female Birzeit university students to pass to their villages.  Their ID's indicate which villages they are from.  All of the young women need to pass Qalandia checkpoint in order to reach their homes.  The students plead with the soldier and state that they have no place to stay in Birzeit, that their university has been forcefully closed because of Israeli closures and they have no choice but to go home to their families.  The soldier claims his "commander" told him not to let the young women through "because they are not from the Jerusalem area."  We attempt to explain to him that in order for the young women to reach their villages, they would have to cross the checkpoint but, he kept repeating that the order came from his commander.  The young women staged a sit-in, telling the soldier that they are going to wait at the checkpoint until they are allowed to pass.  One of the students began to cry, her classmates attempting to soothe her.  Each young woman offers to have her bag searched, but the soldier refuses without giving a reason.  When I tell him I don't understand why he's detaining them, he says "do you know how many women carry bombs?  It's a lot."  When we told him he can search the bags to determine whether there is anything illegal, he says "I can't search 10,000 bags. I have a lot to do...I have to stand here."  After ten minutes pass, the soldier walks away and stations himself at another post, leaving the women to go through.

14:00-  Soldiers notice a group of ten boys (aged 10-12) inside the military airport (the boys climbed over the sharp fence and barbed wire) about 200m away.  The boys were running around the fenced area, taunting the soldiers to "chase" them.  Israeli soldiers sent a jeep into the military airport, two soldiers chased the young boys, one soldier opens fire, the boys quickly jump over the fence toward the Qalandia refugee camp.  The soldiers advance toward the boys, the boys are throwing stones from several areas.  The soldiers are firing both live ammunition and rubber bullets.  IDF soldiers halt all auto traffic and only permit a trickle of pedestrians in or out.  By

14:30, hundreds of cars are idle and eight soldiers in two jeeps recklessly and indiscriminately fire in the direction of the boys, with no regard for pedestrians or bystanders attempting to pass through the checkpoint.  We initially thought that the soldiers had been shooting only at the young boys throwing stones.  We noticed a group of about ten youth running back and forth from behind a wall to the view of the soldiers, and then behind the wall again.  We initially thought that the youth ran from the wall to throw stones, but as we got closer we noticed that the youth took turns running out from behind the wall to make vulgar gestures to the soldiers.  It was quite clear where the soldiers were standing that the youth had not been doing anything to physically harm the soldiers, but the soldiers were shooting at them anyway.