BEIT IBA, Sunday 30 May 2004 PM>Observers: Sheli M., Aliya S., Arza, Carol K, Naomi L (reporting) color=red>When we arrived, there were six detainees who’d been waiting less than an hour for their papers [the Palestinians held at the checkpoints are usually men between the ages of 16 and 35; the ID card details are phoned through and checked against a central listing compiled and maintained by the GSS — also known by its Hebrew acronym as the Shabak or Shin Bet — and this can take up to several hours]. The reservists on duty were consulting a red binder and acting according to written regulations – among them a list of villages whose residents were permitted to go through this checkpoint. All others were detained on suspicion of having reached Nablus by illegal routes. One of them was a young man (school pupil or student). His father arrived, talked to the officer, and the youth was released him at once because one of the soldiers had “made a mistake” and hadn’t checked where he lived.A student was detained for an hour-and-a-half because the soldiers suspected he’d “infiltrated” [i.e. used some illegal route to by-pass the checkpoint in the opposite direction]. His ID card was in the pocket of one of the soldiers and its details hadn’t even been sent for checking. He said he’d gone through the checkpoint, but the soldiers said that was impossible.A truck loaded with furniture came out of Nablus, and the soldiers called it back and asked the driver to unload half its contents for checking. He was quite elderly and had to do it himself.At the entrance to Nablus, a Palestinian Authority policeman equipped with several medical certificates was trying to enter to renew prescriptions for medicine and tests. The officer decided that the documents were old and the policeman must acquire new ones. In addition, Palestinian police aren’t allowed into Nablus because the army has asked the Palestinian Authority for a list of police to be permitted through checkpoints, but the Authority still hasn’t supplied it. So “nobody is going through.” A conversation with I. from the organization of Physicians for Human Rights clarified both to the policeman and to us that in order for anybody to enter Nablus for medical treatment they must have an official referral from a recognized medical body with the same day’s, or very recent, date. So what can be done when most villages don’t have fax machines, and in order to obtain such a document one must go to Nablus? “They can send it by mail!” was the officer’s response.A young man with a 3-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl told us that his two-month-old daughter was in hospital and he must reach her and his wife who was at her bedside because “the children are driving me crazy.” It turned out after clarification with the doctors that she wasn’t in hospital but with the grandmother in Nablus, He was apparently trying to get the children through to their mother. While waiting, he volunteered the information to the soldiers that he was in trouble with the police, and they summoned a police car. Luckily for him, he took the children and got away before the police arrived.It was a brief and fascinating lesson for us in checking facts.