Wednesday's check-points

Abed moved from A-Ram to Issawiyeh to avoid all those hassling check-points to be able to get to work with Hubby more easier. But today when we went to pick him up, there were tons of army and police and school kids were being let through quickly after their bags were checked but others had to stand in line and wait. One soldier said to one of the villagers "If you want quiet, you have to have quiet at your end." I asked the soldier what was going on. He said people from that village they tried to burn down the gas station. I hadn't seen any signs of vandalism. Was it teenagers doing their thing as Jewish teenagers do? Or was it more? Last week I read about Jewish teenagers in the rural Golan Heights who burned their teacher's car at the teacher's home, but no one thought to put up checkpoints for the Jewish teenagers. Of course, playing around the gas station is quite a bit more dangerous, if that was the truth. I don't know who to believe. I asked Arab civilians what they thought was going on - they said it was because Id-Al Fitr ended and everyone was coming back to work so they were checking simply everyone coming into Jerusalem. We saw Abed coming up the street and thought because we knew him, he could avoid standing in line for checking. No such luck. We went to all the soldiers and asked if he could just come through. They all said he has to stand in line with the rest. Then they told me to stand a bit back from the Palestinians coming in. God forbid I might to get to know one. I didn't want to argue, because who wants to argue too much with armed soldiers unless they're doing something terribly wrong, like being abusive, which I didn't see - just a routine hassle and checking IDs. It took Abed 45 minutes to get through the check. But he got through it and meanwhile someone selling Arab-style sesame coated pretzel-like bread got $1 richer from Hubby who decided to buy 2 for our breakfast.