July 30, 2001

We bummed a ride with the Peachtree group to Jerusalem. As we went along the road to Jerusalem's Old City, we saw that the closures were particularly tight today. Soldiers were waiting at the exit of Tantur, taking the IDs of anyone exiting,and making them return to the checkpoint and wait. In our very short trip, twice we saw vans pulled over, with all the passengers standing in a line for the soldiers. We caught our Ford Transit taxi to Ramallah (further up the road than usual - everyone's on-edge after yesterday). One of the passengers was a young Japanese kid, who clearly spoke little English and no Arabic, who was spending seventeen days in the area. Kind of stunning to find such innocence heading into the middle of Ramallah these days.

When we got to the ar-Ram checkpoint (between Jerusalem and Ramallah), two Israeli soldiers opened the van door and peered in. They asked one young man for his ID then asked Marthame - when he responded in English, the soldier turned his attention back to the rest of the van. It looked like we got a "let them go" nod from his partner, but then they asked for the ID of the well-dressed man sitting next to Elizabeth. They then summoned him out of the van. We took off - we were blocking traffic, and nobody else probably wanted to give the soldiers a second look.

The Israeli checkpoint on the Birzeit road has been replaced by large cement blocks.

Then we arrived to Birzeit - well, in reality, only halfway. The usual checkpoint with soldiers was gone. In its place was a line of giant cement blocks, preventing traffic from going through. Everyone in the car patiently disembarked, walked across, and got in taxis on the other side for the rest of the journey.

We met friends in Ramallah tonight for dinner - on the way, there were now two places where the road was blocked. Coming home, there was an Israeli jeep between the two roadblocks, with soldiers shining bright lights on all of us who were walking across. All of this in response to what was, in the grand scheme of the last ten months, a pretty minor ruckus yesterday.