BEIT IBA, Sunday 18 July 2004 PM Observers: Shelly M., Neomi L. (reporting) colour = red> There were 70 detainees, some already held for more than four hours [while they await cross-checking of their ID card details against the central list of security suspects compiled by the General Security Services (also known , from the Hebrew acronym, as the Shabak or Shin Bet). This check often takes a long time , during which the detainees are virtual prisoners at the checkpoints, since the soldiers there hold their ID cards until security clearance — or refusal — comes through].All of our attempts to help failed; we couldn’t do anything but give them water.Many people were crowded together at the exit from Nablus side: checks were strict but there were no delays. A young student was detained because her last name aroused suspicion. She was the mother of a three-month-old baby and was still breast-feeding. She had to wait an hour and 40 minutes before the check came back clean and she was free to go. Among the detainees were two sick people with medical certifications. M. , the checkpoint commander, said anyone could buy these anywhere, but one of the two had his arm bandaged and looked unwell. Another detainee was a male nurse in a Ramallah hospital; we tried to contact the army’s “humanitarian” hotline and the Physicians for Human Rights organization on his behalf, but, as too often happens, they didn’t help. All were freed to go on their way eventually. But a student from An-Najah University was apparently on the “wanted” list. The soldiers handcuffed him and locked him up in solitary confinement on his knees. When they took him out to put him in the GSS vehicle that had come for him, his mother clung to him in tears; his three brothers, too, were there, all weeping. We took their phone numbers so that we can follow up the case. At 15:40 , 45 of the 70 detainees (including the breast-feeding mother) were freed. There were still some 25 waiting, and some of these were still there when we left. At 16:30, more detainees were freed, but among those still waiting was the male nurse. Half a hour later an ambulance drove up with a man with a broken leg, whose ID card said he was from Gaza: it was sent for checking by the GSS. Meanwhile the man explained that he had lived for the past 10 years in Qalqiliya, but in order to change his address he would have to go to Gaza and then, he feared, he wouldn’t be allowed out. And so he lives his life….. detained every time he goes anywhere, today it happened to be the hospital. The ambulance driver waited with him throughout.We left early to visit the family of the young man killed recently by soldiers as he drove his car in Hajja village [the young man was ordered to stop, panicked and stopped too slowly for the soldiers who fired and shot him in the head; he died on the spot. The army car from which the shot came drove off. Next day the army representatives came to apologize.] N., our driver, spoke by phone to the dead man’s father and we gave him a card with the details of the Centre for the Defence of the Individual where they have promised to help him have an investigation launched and make a claim for compensation. Two others were hurt in the same incident when the car the young man was driving crashed into a wallafter he had been hit.