On my way to Ramalla this morning, my service was stopped at both checkpoints. There were four women and four men in my car, including myself and the driver. At the first checkpoint, a soldier took all our passports to his booth. We waited for ten minutes. When he was done, he didn't walk back to the car but instead motioned the driver to get out, walk all the way to the booth and get the passports. Once the driver got our passports, we were on our way.

At the second checkpoint, one soldier asked for our passports while another one walked around to my side of the car. He opened the door and told me to get out of the car. He walked me away from the car and asked me what I was doing here. He said "Do you know that Ramalla is dangerous for you? Why are you going there?" I said I was visiting and I told him I could take care of myself. "Do you know how dangerous it is? They're Arabs." I didn't know what to say to this.

We walk down the road and he leads me to another soldier. This one asked me a series of questions, one right after the other. "Do you have a camera? Why are you here alone? Why don't you go to Israel?"

How should I answer this one... Well, I do have a camera but I did not want to volunteer that information. I felt the same way about question number 2. So I skipped these two and went right to question #3: Why don't I go to Israel? "I might be going to Haifa for a couple days," I said in all honesty. I want to see what it's like inside Israel. "Oh, it's beautiful, go to Haifa. Yeah, you need to go there. Haifa, yeah Haifa," they both nodded in agreement.

The first soldier took me around the car again. He had one last thing to say: "Watch your pockets in Ramalla. It's dangerous." I get back in the car. His final words, laughing as if the whole thing was a big joke: "Have a nice day."

Thanks asshole.