Anabta, Ar-Ras, Saturday AM, 10 June 2006 Watchers: Nadim, Adina, Elath (reporting) The checkpoint commander at A-Ras is exceptionally sadistic. Details follow.09:20 AnabtaOur acquaintance Kim, with an additional volunteer from the church organization, have been here since 07:00.From the west, no line and no checks. From the east, six vehicles processed quickly.The soldiers display their disappointment that both we and the Christian volunteers are abandoning them to themselves.09:43 Ar-Ras Comment: It is difficult to believe that, in a place so remote and in such a short time, it it possible to witness so much distilled evil. A line of eight vehicles is waiting from the north (Tulkarm). There is no line from the south, but each vehicle is inspected. Taxis in both directions deposit their passengers on the dusty path, and they walk to the thorough inspection of their baggage, their babies and their elderly, some two hundred metres to the other end of the line where other taxis are waiting. We were told that the taxi drivers don’t want to waste their time in prolonged waits for checking. So we now have two new taxi ranks.Detainees [held for security background checks]: – five. In the blazing sun without a drop of water or any shade, but with plenty of maltreatment. Two brothers, 16 and 17 year olds, from Tulkarm. Their bicycles on a side. They returned from working their father’s fields and the other end of Jubara – at the locked gate. They do not have any papers or IDs since their father was bitten by a snake and isn’t with them. The checkpoint commander (“big head”?!) decided that they are to be detained until a family member comes with their documents. According to them, they pass through here every day and the soldiers know them – but today, as we said, there is a commander with a big head. Three men also came from the direction of Jubara. One, a good looking young man – “Wanted!” Wow! “Bingo!” And another two who by chance crossed together with him, one young the other in his fifties. Detained because they were together with the “wanted man” though they had never seen him, or each other, before. The older man speaks Hebrew. When one of the youngsters wants to sit in the shade under the rock, the commander forbids it. In our honour (apparently) the “wanted” man is separated from the other detainees, and taken to the concrete box next to the hut, where he is handcuffed behind his back and made to kneel. In the blazing sun. No cover, no shade… Phone call to Tami Cohen. She is dealing with it… In parallel, the following scene: a family arrives from Tulkarm, on their way to A-Ras. The man and wife are in their 30s, accompanied by three small children, the youngest a two year old, and their grandmother. They have permits and everything is in order, but the commander for some reason decides to detain the young woman (“she looks suspicious to me”), the children refuse to go on without her, but he is adamant. Two of the children continue through with their grandmother, while the husband stays waiting on the side and the youngest clings to his mother. In parallel: three men and a child are waiting alongside the vehicles from the north, on the dusty path, at the required distance until the soldier at the checkpoint beckons. Receiving the awaited signal, they proceed cautiously, in measured steps, and when they get to him with outstretched IDs, he barks in crisp Hebrew: “Two or three? What did I say?” The elderly man among the three “gets the hint” and returns to sit and wait till he gets the signal that he may approach the brutal, armed, patriot defending the homeland.Back to scene two – the “suspicious:” mother is standing with her child among the thistles at the side of the track, and waiting silently for her sentence to be passed. The checkpoint commander refuses to check regarding her identity: “I check a number of people at a time, not one by one, all I’ll do it when it suits me.” Her husband, the other two children and the grandmother are waiting separately on the road. A phone call to the IDF’s “Humanitarian Centre” [a hotline for reporting passage problems] apparently does the trick, because after a few minutes he releases the mother. Back to “wanted”: we try to approach the youngster with his hands manacled behind his back – and are told by “big head” to please push off and not bother him. We brought water to all the detainees. When we wanted to give “Bingo” something to drink, the commander decides to display his humanity and approves. The youngster sticks his neck out and opens his mouth (hands still cuffed and kneeling on the ground}, swallows some water and bursts into tears. I tried again to see the handcuffs unsuccessfully. “Big head” is keeping order. Afterwards, when they come to take him, and blindfold him, we can see that the handcuffs are biting in to the bone, cutting into the flesh!. We beg the soldiers who come for him to loosen the cuffs, but to no avail. “Only two minutes journey, and we [illegible; a number of something military]. Comment::Manifestation of evil and sadism! The “wanted” is considered dead! And it’s permissible to torture his body for fun. The sight of the mouth opened to drink and the tears flowing down the face of this handsome young man is devastating.Meanwhile, the elderly detainee who is “guilty” of arriving at the place together with “Bingo” tries to show the commander that he is a sick man and displays his swollen legs, contending that he takes diuretics and must drink. The commander ignores him. As we watch, the man coughs and spits up blood. Again I go over to the commander and report his situation, but he informs me indifferently that he is a medical corpsman himself and he will deal with the man if necessary. I comment that from where he is standing he can’t see the detainee, and he should see that the man is coughing up blood, but he prefers to ignore me, saying that he is doing his job out of love for the homeland – not like us who only interfere with his work… While “wanted” is being collected, the youngsters are released and thereafter the two detainees “guilty” of coming through together with “wanted.”Summary comment: In all the incidents at A-Ras we were witnesses to aggressive and cruel behaviour of the checkpoint commander. Phone calls to Tami Cohen did what they needed to. But we can assume, unfortunately, that there will be many more victims of the evil perpetrated by this determined and sensitive lover of the homeland.