Beit Iba AM
BEIT IBA , Tuesday 6 July 2004 AMObservers: Lirona, Ruthie C., Maya M., Micky F., Elinoar (reporting) colour =- red> This shift started at Irtah, which is reported on separately (see Tulkarm area)Beit IbaIt was insufferably hot. The queues were moving fairly fast. One of the soldiers tended to shout at the long-suffering people, telling them to stand back, etc.We spent most of the morning taking care of one family: the mother , carrying her one-month-old baby girl wrapped in a thick blanket, standing in the sun with another two children, both toddlers; and the 27-year-old father, who was not allowed to proceed through the checkpoint Nablus where his wife was due to undergo some post-natal procedure in the hospital.She couldn’t and wouldn’t go without her husband, and he, in turn, had a rather short fuse, for which who can blame him. We tried begging and explaining, but there was nothing doing. The baby was hungry, the soldiers allowed the mother to feed her inside the concrete cube where body searches are carried out when necessary. Micky called D.B. in Bet El, the health co-ordinator for the Occupied Territories with whom we’ve had good experience. Phone calls went back and forth, the representative of the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [ the army section that handles civilian matters, and which usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] insisted that there was nothing he cold do. But suddenly, without any warning, he acquiesced. After hours of waiting, the young family went through….
Beit Iba
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A perimeter checkpoint west of the city of Nablus. Operated from 2001 to 2009 as one of the four permanent checkpoints closing on Nablus: Beit Furik and Awarta to the east and Hawara to the south. A pedestrian-only checkpoint, where MachsomWatch volunteers were present daily for several hours in the morning and afternoon to document the thousands of Palestinians waiting for hours in long queues with no shelter in the heat or rain, to leave the district city for anywhere else in the West Bank. From March 2009, as part of the easing of the Palestinian movement in the West Bank, it was abolished, without a trace, and without any adverse change in the security situation.
Jun-4-2014Beit-Iba checkpoint 22.04.04
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