BEIT IBA, Sunday 25 July 2004 PM Observers: Yonat B., Noah and Naomi L. (reporting) colour = red>Outright violence and the shooting of a student at Beit Iba. The watch was otherwise calm and without special incident, sparse passage of Palestinians, a few detainees (held for not longer than two hours).15:30 — Four students arrived; they’d completed their examinations and wanted to return home, but today was not the “permitted” day [the Palestinian university week runs from Saturday to Wednesday, since Friday is the Moslem day of rest; the army has an arrangement with the university of An-Najah in Nablus whereby students in possession of a valid student cards are normally granted permission to move through the checkpoints to and from Nablus on Saturdays and Wednesdays respectively ]. One of them wouldn’t give up, went over to the soldier at the checking post and conducted a quiet conversation, trying to persuade him. Suddenly soldier A. began to shout: “Nobody’s going to tell me I’m a liar!”, hit the student twice in the stomach and smashed his face against the concrete barrier. It was covered in blood. At this stage the other soldiers (three of them) tried to separate the two and held A. The student moved away and stood beside the exit next to the checking post. A. wrenched free of his comrades’ grip, shouted again: “Nobody is going to tell me I’m a liar,” and the student fled towards the exit from the checkpoint. A., without a weapon, ran after him, seized a gun from one of the other soldiers and we heard a burst of fire. All this time A.’s comrades were in hot pursuit, trying to stop him. When we arrived, the student was being led by soldiers standing on either side of him , with a gunshot wound in his arm, his face bloody, back towards the checkpoint. They laid him on the ground beside the dusty, filthy path and gave him first aid, bandaging and splinting his arm. He couldn’t move his fingers and every movement made him scream with pain. His swollen face was wiped clean of blood.Meanwhile the gun had been taken away from A., but he went and brought his own weapon and kept repeating: “Nobody is going to tell me I’m a liar, I’ll kill the son of a bitch. I don’t care if I go to jail.” And at the same time, he was instructing his comrades how to bind up the student’s wound ; they told us that he was an army paramedic.Meanwhile aid had been summoned . An army ambulance arrived, the bandage was removed and the wound dressed afresh, the student’s shirt was cut, an IV drip was inserted and a Palestinian ambulance was halted to take the young man to the Rafidiya hospital in Nablus.p>While this was going on, an energetic major arrived with an entourage of officer, told us that “all civilians must get out of the way [literally, in Hebrew, “fly”] double quick.” The Palestinians didn’t dare to come closer, but we told him we’d stand wherever he told us to, but we couldn’t get out of the way [“fly”] altogether, and he gave us a kind of apology. We stood close enough and Noa took photographs. We asked the major what would be done to the soldier who’d fired and he replied: “I can’t talk to you. You’ll get answers only from the authorities you’re talking to by telephone now ”.We contacted the Army Spokesman’s Office, the army’s “humanitarian” hotline, the Center for Defence of the Individual . We would like to emphasize that this needless shooting took place in an area filled with civilians, women and children and vehicles and it was only by a miracle that nobody else was hurt.We took the student’s telephone number and will check tomorrow what happened to him.When everything had calmed down, A. was taken from the checkpoint which was now empty and we talked to the soldiers who were no less shocked than we were. They told us about him and none of them justified the beating and the shooting. We said it was another example of a soldier who’d had a bellyful of checkpoints and had lost control. They didn’t disagree.During the incident the checkpoint was closed down for 15 minutes and then opened immediately. The soldiers let people through with exemplary calm. People were checked and went through, trucks and vehicles passed into Nablus. The few detainees were released. We waited for the Huwwara team, who reported having a very difficult watch, to come past and collect us.