BEIT IBA, Sunday 1 August 2004 PMObservers: Noa P., Yonat B., Naomi L. (reporting) colour=red>This report is specially intended for the attention of the head of the Civil Administration Ilan Paz who either denies everything or shakes off all responsibility; you have only to spend five minutes at the checkpoint and you know that either he just doesn’t know what’s going on or he pretends that that’s the caseLast Wednesday, a taxi-driver who takes passengers from Tulkarm to Nablus called me at 21:00 and said that at 18:00 he’d been taking passengers to Beit Iba, when he was caught, his papers were confiscated and the soldiers told him that as punishment, they would come and release him at midnight. He was panic-stricken, alone in the dark, without water and food. After we’d made telephone calls to the army’s “humanitarian” hotline and even to A., the IDF spokesman in Nablus, a jeep was sent at 22:00 to give back his papers and release him. It was quiet at Beit Iba today—the quiet after the storm [last Sunday, a student was shot and quite seriously wounded by an Israeli soldier in an unprovoked attack]. The platoon which had manned the checkpoint last Sunday had been replaced by veterans who’d done this job before. Commander N., smiling and relaxed, adhered to procedure and assured the District Co-ordinating Office representative that he’d learned all the new regulations [the DCO is the army section that handles civilian matters; in addition to its offices, it also usually has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians]. On the hilltop, there was a new position for the soldiers. Traffic in and out was sparse and checks were swift. Because of the intolerable heat we handed out cold water throughout the watch.Detainees:Students wanting to leave Nablus were detained for hours [pending having their ID card details, which are phoned through to the General Security Services (GSS, aka the Shabak or Shin Bet), cross-checked against a central list of security suspects. This check can take several hours, especially if the soldiers wait to accumulate a batch of several IDs before they relay the details to the GSS, and , equally, if they wait to get back a whole batch of replies before they start to release the detainees who are usually men aged between 16 and 30. During this time, the detainees are virtually prisoners at the checkpoint because the soldiers retain the ID cards until replies come back from the GSS]. One had been trying to get home and the soldier had sent him back, so he’d tried to sneak past. Weapons at the ready, the soldiers chased after him and caught him . His papers were taken for checking by the GSS, and he was imprisoned in the cell for suspects. The blazing hot metal door was closed and he hung out of the window begging us to do something. He was kept there for four hours on the pretext that the GSS reply hadn’t been received. At the end of the watch, we called Nablus DCO, since the army’s “humanitarian” hotline didn’t reply. The woman operations officer shouted at us that he deserved eight hours detention. We called Ilan Paz’s spokesperson and she told us to contact the “humanitarian” line and even put us through. We asked that a complaint be registered. When we left, he was released and ran to catch the last taxi from Beit Iba.A 27-year-old lawyer working in Nablus had always used his law permit to enter Nablus. Yesterday the soldiers mislaid it. Today, when he arrived, they still couldn’t find it and sent his details off to the GSS. He waited four hours and in the end decided to do without it and asked to be released. After half-an-hour they let him go. Tomorrow, he said, he’d apply for a new permit.A pharmacist who goes through every day to Nablus was detained and his ID details sent for GSS checking.A man from Kafr Thulth reported that he was filling the tank of his car this morning at Azzun, hurrying to take his 70-year-old grandfather to hospital for treatment of a broken leg, when a large army vehicle arrived and confiscated his ID card . The soldiers couldn’t locate the driver of the vehicle. The “humanitarian” line said they knew nothing of the matter. The man wanted to drive to Sarra or Qusin to locate the document, but without the document he couldn’t go through. Finally, after several hours, during which the soldiers search again and again, “another” similar vehicle from the battalion arrived and handed over the document. Nobody knew how the document had reached the battalion, and the soldier who brought it to Beit Iba was not the one who’d confiscated it from the man.A family with a child was returning from a doctor’s appointment in Nablus, but the doctor hadn’t been there so they had no confirmation with today’s date. The DCO officer was convinced they’d gone off to eat at a restaurant, “gorged themselves” (which is definitely a terrorist act! ) and were now just making up a story. We persuaded the father of the family to send the rest home and to wait on his own for the GSS security check. A taxi driver from Rafidiya had been arrested on Thursday at 10:00 and his ID card had been confiscated. Since then he’s been coming every day to get it. Today, after several hours, the commander finally told him that tomorrow he must go to the DCO at Huwwara and apply for a paper confirming the loss of his ID card . When he got there, he was told that he doesn’t need such a document, it’s enough to get a note to that effect from a policeman.Four students of media communication from Jenin were on their way for a week’s further study at Nablus, equipped with letters from the university. They knew nothing about the “permitted” days of passage – Saturdays (into Nablus for the start of the university week) and Wednesdays (out of Nablus for the weekend, since Friday is the Moslem day of rest) [An-Najah university has an arrangement with the Israel army whereby students presenting valid student cards go through the checkpoints on these days generally without any trouble and without needing permits]. They were detained and later released.All in all, there were about 60 detainees who tended not to sit in the area newly built for them but rather to stand near the checking position in the [vain] hope of speeding up the check..