Awarta, Beit Furik, Burin (Yitzhar), Huwwara, Za’tara (Tapuah), Thu 21.2.08, Afternoon
14:06 Two Hummers pass us in the opposite direction, as well as a military vehicle with a big container (near the turning to Haris)
14:08 Three soldiers watch at the hitch hike station near Ariel
14:11 The entrance to Zeita is closed by concrete blocks
14:14 Za’tara/Tapuah Junction:
15 vehicles coming from the west are waiting and are being checked at the check post no. 1. Coming from the north there are 17 vehicles waiting to be checked, in 3 check post. There is a segregation: the inhabitants of Jenin and Nablus, aged 16-35 are not allowed to leave their place. (but) we are not to know this.
14:22 – at the entrance to Beita it is quiet
14:24 The Burin/Yitzhar CPs are not manned
14:26 The Huwwara CP –
Part of the people entering Nablus are checked by two soldiers (near the water trough)
In the cell there are three detainees, waiting for more than 4 hours. 
Two young men and a child. Photos will be attached. The CP commander arrived and says: to call the police?
Some details about the detainees: One is from the village of Bidya, and the second young man and the child are from Beita. The information about the detainees will be sent to Assaf from the Human Rights Association.
Before entering the shed of the CP two men from Beita tell us that during the night, at 02:00, a curfew was imposed, many military units entered the village and had about 60 men leave their houses. They were put on a bus which left the village. Until this hour about 30 people were returned and the others are still detained. Only about 20 minutes ago the curfew on Beita was lifted. One of the men said that his brother and cousin were taken, another said that his son, aged about 21, was taken. He said that when the soldiers entered the house they threw all the objects out of the cupboard and stepped on the Koran.
We transmitted the details to Noa P.
While we were contacting the Center at Ariel to report – the three detainees were released.
T., the DCO representative who now arrived, helps to solve a few problems: A truck driver with vegetables who drove on the Apartheid road, is released, relatively quickly, a Palestinian from Tubas, the owner of a business at the market in Beita, accompanied by his son, who works with him, is not allowed to pass on to his house in Tobas because of his son (in his twenties) – here too the DCO representative lets common sense prevail and the authorization is given (the details of the man will be sent to Micky F.)
[Tubas belongs to the Jenin area according to the lists of areas and division of towns andor villages appearing in them – everything is noted in the table stuck to the checking shed of the vehicles entering Nablus which T. allows us to see. By the way, on the list there are a few villages about which it is written that the segregation doesn’t apply to them].
In the detention cell there is now a young man – T. tries to find out for us why he is there: the lad tried to pass at the side queue together with a woman he said was his wife, but it turned out that she was his aunt, and so he was told to go back to the beginning of the queue or be put into the detention cell, and that is what happened. T. tries to speed up his release and succeeds an hour later. Near the shed a boy was detained because, according to T., they found on him keys that belong to the army (?!). He was released rather quickly.
There are three checking posts for the young men, the magnometers work, but they still have to lift their shirts, a military policewoman and two soldiers check them. The side queue is very slow and continues beyond the shed, and only when the DCO man went there the elderly, the woman and the children began passing as usual – today there are many students returning home for the weekend.
There is an x-ray maching, there is no dog-trainer. There is no load on the queue of the vehicles entering Nablus, and this is what is told to us by the volunteers from the ecumenical church regarding the queue of the vehicles leaving Nablus.
An Israeli girl (an immigrant from Russia) entered by mistake on the side of Nablus at the CP and passed again to the side of Huwwara. All this happened because she was told to show her ID card, because she is married to an inhabitant of Nablus who lives with her in Tel Aviv. They have a child, and he too in his baby carriage, is at the CP. After two hours her husband succeeded to pass.
16:14 Beit Furik-
At the parking lot 4 vehicles await their turn to pass the CP in the direction of Nablus. The CP commander greets us with the order not to pass the white line. We are told (by a driver who passed from Beit Furik to Nablus) that about 10 vehicles coming from Nablus are awaiting their turn in order to reach Beit Furik. Only one checking lane is operated alternately to check the vehicles. Three soldiers are checking, the driver leaves the car, shows his ID and then the car is checked. In the pedestrians’ shed we see about 15-20 Palestinians coming home from Nablus, waiting to be checked. An invalid woman passes the CP with great difficulty.
16:55 – Awarta – (peeping from the main road) we see 7 trucks heading for Nablus, waiting.
17:05 – Back to the Huwwara CP – in the detention shed there is a 24 years old, who is not believed to be a doctor. He is released a short time after our arrival.
Burin/Yitzhar CPs – are not manned, near Beita – all is quiet
17:40 Za’tara – 30 vehicles coming from the north, two checking posts, coming from the east one vehicle, one checking post
17:44 Zeita – the entrance is closed
According to the Center – men aged 16-35 are not allowed to pass in the whole northern Samaria.
A siege.
'Awarta
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Awarta, an internal checkpoint in the heart of the West Bank, is located east of the Hawara checkpoint, at the junction of Roads 555 (which was forbidden for Palestinian traffic in this area) and the entrance road to Nablus. It was one of the four checkpoints that surrounded Nablus until 2009. We used to watch it at Huwwara shifts because it was the only one where goods could be transferred to and from Nablus, using the back-to-back method. It was operated by the army, from 06:00 to 20:00. Until 2009.
Ronit Dahan-RamatiApr-23-2026Awarta Checkpoint is empty
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Beit Furik checkpoint
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One of the three internal checkpoints that closed on the city of Nablus - Beit Furik to the east, Hawara to the south, Beit Iba to the west. The checkpoint is located at the junction of Roads 557 (an apartheid road that was forbidden for Palestinians), leading to the Itamar and Alon Morea settlements and Road 5487. The checkpoint was established in 2001 for pedestrians and vehicles; The opening hours were short and the transition was slow and very problematic.Allegedly, the checkpoint is intended to monitor the movement to and from Nablus of the residents of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan, being the only opening outside their villages. Since May 2009 the checkpoint is open 24 hours a day, the military presence is limited, vehicles can pass through it without inspections, except for random inspections. (Updated April 2010)
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Beta
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Beta is a town of 12,000 people, high unemployment rate. Many work in Israel, others in agriculture. Neat ornamental system. Unemployment is high. Young people, even the educated, are forced to look for work in Israel. Medical services are available once a week.
Settlers from Yitzhar and Itamar harass residents frequently and prevent them from cultivating their fields: Permits are required from the DCO / DCL / DCL / DCL to go to work.
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Burin (Yitzhar)
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Burin (Yitzhar)
This is a Palestinian village in the Nablus governorate, a little south of Nablus, on the main road passing through the West Bank. The settlements: Yitzhar and Har Bracha, settled in locations that surrounded the village, placed fences so it is cut off the main road.
There are around 4000 inhabitants. Most of them are engaged in agriculture and pasture, although many graduates of the two secondary schools continue to study at the university. Academic positions are hardly available, they find work as builderd, or leave for the Gulf countries.
The village lands were appropriated several times for the establishment of Israeli settlements and military bases, and as a result, Burin's land and water resources dwindled. lSince 1982, more than 2,000 dunams of village land have been declared "state land" and then transferred to Har Bracha settlement.
Over the past few years and more so since 2017, the villagers have been terrorized by the residents of Yitzhar and Har Bracha, the Givat Ronen outpost and others. Despite the close proximity of soldiers to an IDF base close to one of the village's schools, residents are suffering from numerous stone-throwing events, vehicle and fire arson, also reported in the press.
In 2023, the prevention of the olive harvest in the village plot was more violent than ever. Soldiers and settlers walked with drawn weapons between the houses of the village and demanded that people stop harvesting in the village itself and in the private plots outside the village. The settlers from Yitzhar and Giv'at Roned raided the olive groves and stole crops. 300 olive trees belonging to the residents of Burin, near Yitzhar, were uprooted. The loss of livelihood from the olives causes long-term economic damage to the farmers' families, bringing them to the point of starvation.
(updated for November 2023)
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Huwwara
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The Huwwara checkpoint is an internal checkpoint south of the city of Nablus, at the intersection of Roads 60 and 5077 (between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar). This checkpoint was one of the four permanent checkpoints that closed on Nablus (Beit Furik and Awarta checkpoints to the east and the Beit Iba checkpoint to the west). It was a pedestrian-only barrier. As MachsomWatch volunteers, we watched therre since 2001 two shifts a day - morning and noon, the thousands of Palestinians leaving Nablus and waiting for hours in queues to reach anywhere else in the West Bank, from the other side of the checkpoint the destination could only be reached by public transport. In early June 2009, as part of the easing of Palestinian traffic in the West Bank, the checkpoint was opened to vehicular traffic. The passage was free, with occasional military presence in the guard tower. Also, there were vehicle inspections from time to time. Since the massacre on 7.10.2023, the checkpoint has been closed to Palestinians.
On February 26, 2023, about 400 settlers attacked the town's residents for 5 hours and set fire to property, such as houses and cars. Disturbances occurred in response to a shooting of two Jewish residents of Har Bracha by a Palestinian Terrorist. The soldiers stationed in the town did not prevent the arson and rescued Palestinian families from their homes only after they were set on fire. No one was punished and Finance Minister Smotrich stated that "the State of Israel should wipe out Hawara." Left and center organizations organized solidarity demonstrations and support actions for the residents of Hawara.Hawara continued to be in the headlines in all the months that followed: more pogroms by the settlers, attacks by Palestinians and a massive presence of the army in the town. It amounted to a de facto curfew of commerce and life in the center of the city. On October 5, 2023, MK Zvi established a Sukkah in the center of Hawara and hundreds of settlers backed the army blocked the main road and held prayers in the heart of the town all night and the next day. On Saturday, October 7, 23 The "Swords of Iron" war began with an attack by Hamas on settlements surrounding Gaza in the face of a poor presence of the IDF. Much criticism has been made of the withdrawal of military forces from the area surrounding Gaza and their placement in the West Bank, and in the Hawara and Samaria region in particular, as a shield for the settlers who were taking over and rioting.
On November 12, 2023, the first section of the Hawara bypass road intended for Israeli traffic only was opened. In this way, the settlers can bypass the road that goes through the center of Hawara, which is the main artery for traffic from the Nablus area to Ramallah and the south of the West Bank. For the construction of the road, the Civil Administration expropriated 406 dunams of private land belonging to Palestinians from the nearby villages. The settlers are not satisfied with this at the moment, and demand to also travel through Hawara itself in order to demonstrate presence and control.(updated November 2023)
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Shoshi AnbarMay-18-2025Huwara: The old houses in Area C
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Za'tara (Tapuah)
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Za'tara (Tapuah) Za'tara is an internal checkpoint in the heart of the West Bank, at the intersection of Road 60 and Road 505 (Trans-Samaria), east of the Tapuah settlement. This checkpoint is the "border" marked by the IDF between the north and south of the West Bank, in accordance with the policy of separation between the two parts of the West Bank that has been in place since December 2005. At the Za'tara checkpoint, there are separate routes for Israelis and Palestinians. In the route for Israelis, there are no inspections and the route for Palestinians inspects. The queue lengthens and shortens suits. The checkpoint is open 24 hours a day. The checkpoint is partially staffed and the people who pass through it are checked at random.
Shoshi AnbarSep-27-2023Za'atra (Tapuah Intersection). Signs
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