Huwwara, Saturday 18.3.06 AMObservers: Vivy Z., Ruthi A., Noga K., Chava H. (reporting)Guest: Noga A.Translation: Hanna K.On the way to the CP at the outskirts of the village of Beita, we went to visit the home of a family which has already been mentioned in the reports of the Huwwara shifts. This is the fourth time the army exercises the the revolting procedure named “straw widow”, probably because this is a two-storeyed house located very near to the main road. The army also decorated it in the well known military esthetical manner, which announces to every person approaching it that the house is governed by those who have a developed security awareness and who wrapped its roof in camouflage nets that flutter in the wind, and who also have a claear patriotic awareness which is manifested in small and large Israeli flags that hang and drop from every window so that there should not by any possibility of mistaking the identity of the camouflaged persons. There was not much we could do there. We drank coffee with the family living in the house, and then one of the sons asked us to go up with him to the upper floor and to the roof to see whether there were any soldiers there or whether the flags and the camouflage nets serve as scarecrows to frighten off the natives. It turns out that indeed this is the case. Only a scarecrow and no soldiers. Have they perhaps gone? Have they perhaps gone for good???At the Huwwara CP there is commotion and pressure, as well as surprises for whomever has not been here for an entire month. The CP changes all the time. Is it fear that makes an empty perspex cage appear in the center of the CP? And also the new orange turnstiles which appeared on top of the old ones? These seem so sophisticated and their movement is smooth and quiet. Between the old squeaking turnstiles they look like visitors from a progressive civilization who found themselves against their will stuck with the mob. Alright, for the time being they are not active and the CP commander shrugs when he hears the questions what their purpose is at all. He does not know. Nobody told him. He also has not idea regarding the empty Perspex cage and the big elliptical table which is placed before it. It does not function yet. On top of all these there are new low metal doors between the concrete lanes, which lead from one turnstile to the table that does not yet function, and from it to another turnstile. It is fear that makes the CP so efficient and invents new ways and means, lanes, Perspex , computers, short lists, enclosures, a small barrack for solitary confinement, pillboxes, turnstiles, checking posts, wolf-packs and drawn guns? All the above in about twenty meters of the CP, naturally except for the Palestinians – those in whose honor and in order not to get too near them and to prevent friction with them and approach to them and all other possibilites, all these were invented.Behind the CP a new narrow way is in the course of being paved. It is important to stress this fact because this is another stage in the effort to train the passers by. Let them go one by one, this will make it easier for the soldiers to supervise the passage. It is easy to imagine what will happen here when this narrow disciplined woad will be activated.In the meantime the crowdedness between the concrete lanes is terrible, shouts and pushing and the line does not end because somewhere there sits a Security Services man who sends out hot alerts and just today there are “a lot of hot alerts”. The car queue is very long and its end cannot be seen. Women pass relatively quickly but what is the use of their quick passage if later they have to wait, often with a baby in their arms, for over an hour for a husband, a son, a brother or another family member with whom they set out. This man stands in the regular queue and may perhaps stand there for another hour or more, and in the meantime the soldiers annoy the women claiming that they are disturbing the passage, and don’t sit here and don’t sit there.In the pocket of a young man a knife was found. Noga who saw it says that it is a small knife put in an engraved sheath, of the sort one hangs on the wall for decoration. The young man bought it in Nablus. When we arrived he was already handcuffed in the shet and two hours later a police car arrived to take him to the Ariel Police station. It I understood rightly they let him call his family, and only after his father, mother and brother arrived and talked to him, he was taken to the Police car. The parents were stunned and amazed and helpless and enumerated to us (to us!!!) all the proofs of the young man’s innocence. We took all his details, gave them the phone number of the A-Damir organization which takes care of Palestinian detainees, informed Adi Dagan and shall try to follow the matter up.There are detainees. Most of them are detained as a punishment for something but in a conversation with the CP commander, a young man who is usually quite cooperative, he explains to us that their deeds render them suspect. We reminded him that it is forbidden to detain as a punishment, and a few minutes later they were all released. Certainly not because of us, but we permitted ourselves to gloat a little bit.On the way back all the shops at the village of Huwwara are shut. There is a curfew, again.