Huwwara 19 June ‏2006 Watchers: Annelien K., Micky F. (reporting)7:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.Za’atra7:30 a.m. Three lanes and a humanitarian queue are open from the north.Ambulances, Palestinian Authority employees and medical staff cross via the humanitarian queue.The checks are comparatively quick, however, it took fifteen minutes for a full busload of passengers to cross.The bus driver tells us that the Taniv and Tamimi bus companies are not permitted to leave or enter Nablus. Thus passengers wishing to get to Ramallah get off the buses at the roadblock, are checked in the pedestrian lane, and get on a different company’s bus in the taxi car park (the driver claims that this has been going on for over two months).8:10 a.m.We leave in the direction of Huwwara where there are 28 cars waiting in the queue from Nablus in the direction of Ramallah.Yitzhar Junction8:20 a.m. It has changed to Huwwara-Jit Road and there are no cars at all at the roadblock.Huwwara8:30 a.m. The pedestrian checks are very slow. There are about 70 pedestrians at the roadblock.There is a detainee from Awarta – he has been detained since 7:30 a.m. because he was in a hurry to get to work and bypassed the queue.The roadblock commander tells us that he will detain him for 3 – 4 hours in order to teach him a lesson. The DCO representative, with the rank of lieutenant refuses to tell us his name and is not prepared to talk to us. We tried our luck at the Army Centre where they promised to look into the matter and get back to us. We brought the detainee food and drink.We tried to get him to phone his work place on his telephone, but unfortunately there was no reply. He was apparently released after four hours – regrettably we were held up with problems at Beit Furiq and were unable to find out when he was released and whether he had problems at his workplace because he could not remember any telephone numbers.The morning shift was made up of men soldiers who carried out the inspections. The checks are manual and directly on the body because the IDF obviously has no money, or perhaps actually no will, to supply the soldiers with the checking equipment which is used by every security guard at the entrance to every shopping mall.9:15 a.m.The roadblock commander opens a humanitarian queue for ten minutes, lets women and men over forty cross and closes the gate again.Car inspection: there is no x-ray machine which would cut down the time of the luggage checks at least.Passengers are requested to open every bag and the soldiers rummage around searching through their possessions.The average time for each car inspection is between 10 – 15 minutes.When we speak to the roadblock commander about the issue he tells us to complain to the army.9:30 a.m.A car is checked, behind the caravan, by a dog handler. The passengers wait at the side. They complain that they have been waiting in the car queue since 8:00 a.m. The dog handler’s inspection takes about 17 minutes.Beit Furiq10:00 a.m. There are three soldiers at the roadblock.The orders are, insofar as we managed to find out: Only the resident of five villages in the environs of Beit Furiq – Salem, Dir Chatav, Beit Dajan, Beit Furiq and Azmut, are permitted to cross freely via the Beit Furiqroadblock.Nablus residents between the ages of 15 – 30 are not permitted to cross via the roadblock.The rest, according to the soldiers, can make a detour (so what is the purpose of the roadblock?) and the following is the list of all those who were denied permission to cross:Three residents of Natsaria, situated a few kilometres away from Beit Dajan and whose municipality is Nablus; a woman who wanted to visit her mother in hospital; a man wishing to go to the dentist in Nablus and a man who wanted to certify his documents at the state department of the Palestinian Authority. None of these were permitted to enter Nablus.We asked the soldiers where can they cross and their answers: across the hills… via Chamra… they know where they can cross. The claims of the Palestinians that they are not allowed to cross via Chamra, and that if they go across the hills the army will catch them and shoot them were to no avail. The army reckons them to be residents of the Bikah Valley and, therefore, denies them entrance to Nablus, their municipality, via Beit Furiq.However, the Palestinians say that in actual fact since Elbidan has been closed they are prisoners in their villages and are not allowed to cross via the Valley crossings.From the direction of Nablus come two parents and their three daughters who were allowed into Nablus yesterday, but not today, today they are not allowed to return home. Only God has the solution to the problem of how they will get back to Natsaria.We telephone the Army Centre. According to Raz there, they should go via Chamra. According to him there are taxis which have permits to cross via Chamra and from there via Ma’aleh Efraim, Za’atra and Huwwara and to Nablus. Three Palestinians claimed, as we noted, that this is not so – they are not permitted to cross Chamra and thus they are imprisoned in their villages.A young man from Beit-Leed wishing to cross to visit a relative in Beit Dajan pleaded to be allowed to cross, but was not given permission.And again – according to the Army Centre he should go via Za’atra, Migdalim, Ma’aleh Efraim and Huwwara.A father from Salem, and his daughter who is married to a resident of Awarta, wish to visit his other daughter in Beit Dajan – the father could have crossed but his daughter who lives in Awarta is not permitted to visit her sister. They both returned to Nablus.A lorry coming from Jamayin carrying animal fodder is also not allowed to cross via Beit Furiq. Its driver found a creative solution – a driver who is a resident of Beit Furiq. A lorry from Hebron has a similar story.At the Centre, Raz promises to look into the matter and get back to us with an answer.The following day I tried to get an answer and Raz told me that the problem has been raised at a higher level – at the Division. No answer has yet been received.We also got in touch with Chana Barag to request that DCO personnel are sent to the roadblock. Chana contacted the head of DCO, Fuad, and he promised to send a DCO representative to find out what is happening. Chana asked us to wait.At 11:30 a.m. a DCO jeep arrived with two officers – the lieutenant who refused to speak to us at Huwwara and a 2nd lieutenant Matan. They drove up to the soldiers’ position. We came over to speak to them, but they motioned us to wait until they had talked to the soldiers. Chuckles and confabs with the roadblock commander. When the conversation ended we once again went over and Matan informed us that they are not allowed to talk to us, I asked why – after all they had asked us to wait, but the lieutenant in a rude and aggressive tone informed me that I should move away and almost closed the jeep door on me. I stood my ground, telephoned Chana, and told her about the lieutenant and his behaviour. The 2nd lieutenant, who had apparently been ordered to talk to us by Fuad, resentfully explained to us that there was nothing to be done – those are the orders.At this moment a mother and her Down’s syndrome daughter got to the roadblock. Her address appears to be Jiftlik. She wanted to go to Nablus for treatment but she too was not permitted to cross. The DCO men who, according to Fuad, had been sent to speak to the Palestinians and the soldiers, did not even bother to find out what was happening two metres away from them.We told her to go over to them and speak to them directly. Only her tears melted the DCO men’s hearts for a moment and they permitted her to cross, but then only on condition that she change her address without delay. The person who bothered to talk to her was Matan in broken Arabic, and not the lieutenant whose mother tongue is Arabic. This lieutenant did bother to complain to Fuad that I insulted him when I told Chana on the telephone that he was behaving rudely.So – the soldiers stated to us that they had been sent to the roadblock to defend the settlers, and who is there for the Palestinians we asked – the DCO should take care of them. We saw no care on their part…It appears that they want to get them to leave the Valley and move to Beit Furiq in order to be able to say that the Valley has no residents in it.We passed the handling of the villagers who fall between the stools –Akrabania, Natzaria, Ein Shibli and Chirbet Beit Chasan – to the Civil Rights Organisation and a detailed report will be prepared next week by Naomi and Dafna and sent to them…