Jubara Checkpoint, Wednesday 13:00 PM, 7 Jan 2004. MachsomWatchers: Dina G., Shirlyee P., Tamara R. Schoolchildren’s Gate:We started here, just to make sure that no one was waiting at this Gate. As expected it was empty [because the children are on school vacation].We did notice the “tent” set up by UNICEF — very unsatisfactory, it looks entirely useless against rain and wind!From there we drove back to the Jubara checkpoint :Relatively quiet. There is no “closure” so not much stalled traffic and things seemed to flow. Of course there were the usual detainees — but only two….and as usual we got the same response. “We will let them go soon.” “We will free them soon.” The soldier in charge of checking the passes was very hostile and unpleasant and refused any contact with us. The others were O.K. We did ask the ranking officer (lieutenant) on duty why they chosen him to stand there… his response was that he was angry with MachsomWatch. He had viewed reports on the Web site and read how some members had mentioned soldiers’ names and times of their duty at the checkpoint. (Note: this is something that should be discussed.) Dina then received a call from Michalina asking to go to the Tulkarm checkpoint. She had been there in the morning and was witness to a group of 20 detainees being held there since 6.00 AM! She was promised they would be released and asked us to follow up on it.We did. We saw there a group of 11 who told us they had been there since early in the morning. Dina phoned Kamil (Matak) and Yuval (DCO). The latter was most concerned.We then approached the soldiers who assured us they were NOT the same group of detainees, and went over with us to question the men on how long they had been waiting. It seems the soldier was correct and that these detainees had only been there since 10.00 AM or 12:00 noon. (This is still long enough, as it was cold and rainy.)Dina phoned both Kamil and Yuval to explain the misunderstanding but they did promise to intervene with this group as well and try and release the detainees as soon as possible.