Beit Iba, Monday, 1.5.06 PM Observers: Ziona S., Yonah A. (reporting)Guest: Ofra15:40 Roadblock at the junction of Shave Shomron, before the turnoff. 3 soldiers and their vehicle. No traffic jam, cars go through without delay. 15:45 Taxi drivers sit in the snackbar next to the checkpoint and drink coffee with a teacher who works in Tulkarm and lives in Nablus. In the morning, they let him pass through to Tulkarm but, in the afternoon, they didn’t allow him to go home to Nablus. He returned by foot, through Ramin. “He’s a strong guy and can get through by using side paths, but the women…” one of the drivers says to us. He has a permit and he can also go through the Anabta checkpoint, as well as Beit Iba. He left Tulkarm with a car full of people going to Nablus, among them the teacher. At the checkpoint, they took the passengers out as they were forbidden passage, so the taxi driver with the permits had to go back himself and lose the money. People from Tulkarm, Jenin area and Qalqilya can’t go through Beit Iba because of the closure. 15:55 2 detainees sitting in the enclosure. One is from Salfit and the second from Asira ash Shmaliya. They work in Nablus and want to go home. The checkpoint commander says that their documents are being checked. When one of them asks to go to the lavatory, the soldier says there isn’t one and also that they have to abstain. Very few people going through, probably because of the closure. 16:30 The detainees are released, although they are both sent back the way they came. A young Palestinian woman who speaks English asks for our help. She, her husband and her 3 1/2 year old daughter live in Canada. They came back for a visit in Nablus together with the mother and sister of the woman, who live in Azzun. The husband presented a Canadian passport, but he didn’t have a Palestinian ID. The family went through without the man, who was waiting until the soldiers figured out what to do. Meanwhile, the woman found her husband’s ID in her bag. She gave it to a soldier who was at the time busy with another problem, and wasn’t paying attention. Ten minutes later, the soldier looked at all the documents and he realized that there was no reason to stop them and they all went through in peace. A husband and wife tried to leave Nablus. The woman has a Jordanian passport from 1993 and no Palestinian ID. She is 8 months pregnant and she has a small child at home in Hag’a (?Hajja). They let her husband through while they call the police for the wife. The husband explains that he works in the DCO and he took his wife to the doctor in Nablus. Nothing helps. Half an hour of discussions and phone calls and arguments. At 16:50, they release the woman. Everyone calms down and they leave with a handshake. Unnecessary suffering. 16:55 A female student from Mahim el Farah, in the Jenin area; studies at the university in Nablus. She went home this morning in order to get money from her parents for next month’s rent; now they are not allowing her to return to Nablus because of the closure; however, also the roads to her home are closed off. We call the humanitarian hotline. Nissan listens and asks us to call back in another 10 minutes. The checkpoint commander wants to know what they said to us, and says that he prefers that we make the call as things move along faster that way. He disagrees with my claim that he could have used common sense and let the girl through and says that they have clear instructions for a total closure in the next 2 days. The student herself shows understanding of the difficulty of the soldiers and of her own suffering. 17:55– I call Nissan who explains that this is a very difficult period and he really can’t let the girl back into Nablus. She has to go home. I ask for his help in finding a way back, so that she can avoid other checkpoints. Nissan promises to get back to me and in fact, after another 10 minutes, he calls back with a long and detailed route. The student goes over to the taxis. 18:05 On the way back, we pass a roadblock at the junction of Shave Shomron and a permanent checkpoint at the J’it Junction, only for vehicles coming from the East, from the Tapuah Junction.