Beit Furik, 16 Feb 2004, 10:00 till 12:40. Suzy M., Aya K.-Reporting When we parked our car close to the waiting taxi drivers, on the other side of the apartheid-road, for those passing the checkpoint from the direction Nablus, a jeep pulled up, and all of us stopped talking and we waited. Three soldiers got out and ordered to move the taxis that were parked further away.Suzy: “should I move mine too?”Soldier: “no, you don’t have to, but pity on you.”Suzy tried to find out what was the logic in this, and put forward that, let’s say, somebody who had arrived at the other side with a baby in a taxi, or take a crippled person, or elderly, it is clear that they cannot cover this distance without assistance, and why shouldn’t the taxis be parked as nearby as possible, and this is not really close, and the road serves as a buffer, no and no and no, ‘they can ask’, and ‘they don’t know that they can ask’ she insists, ‘they know’, ‘they don’t’ she said, ‘if they can’t walk, they won’t come anyway’ concluded the soldier. In the meantime some drivers had been listening to the conversation, ’yalla arg’ah, allawara’[go back] the soldier doesn’t forget to add from the well-known’ song of the conqueror’.Just before the soldiers arrived some drivers were putting on tea on an improvised fire.One of the drivers: ‘let’s have some tea here, can we?’Soldier: ‘not here, there’ and points in the distance. Somewhere which is not here. Because this is what it’s all about. Why should they stand here? Why should they drink the tea they have prepared already here. Because here is easier. Because here it is ready. Because here it is more logical, more convenient.And why should they move over there?To make it less convenient. To make it more difficult for those passing the checkpoint. More exhausting.So some moved a bit. At their leisure. Most did not. And the soldiers left. To hunt other prey. And the taxis, slowly, returned to the same spot.A young man told that he was imprisoned in the Hawwara facility for ten days. He held a paper with the exact dates. He is a taxi driver. He was arrested somewhere, because he was driving somewhere, why? Is it because the road was for Jews only? Or not? What is the difference, he was arrested, without explanation, without trial, without reason, without any need for explaining anything, because everything is allowed, everything is possible.We see some kind of bulldozer on the hill (for those who know Beth Furik the hill on the left when facing Nablus). They are building a military post, the soldier explains, they build it as should to protect you, he added when he saw that we were not impressed.Eight men, all from the palestinian police, from Jenin, from Beth Furik and Beth daj’an, who work in Nablus, arrived at the checkpoint in the certainty that that will be allowed to pass, but they were not permitted so. And they are waiting since eight this morning. We called the palestinian liaison office who said they will check. Suzy called the israeli DCO who assured that they will investigate. We lost track of them towards the end of our watch, so I do not know what happened. Anyway, they did not pass through the checkpoint.Two detainees on the left. We approached them to ask what happened. They told us that they did not try to circumvent the checkpoint but they were caught there, and they point in the direction of the road. The soldier is apparently bothered by the fact that we addressed them to ask a true description of what happened and not from him, he interferes and asks Suzy what he told you that he went around or passed from here?Suzy: that he passed from here.Soldier, and in his voice a trace of shock and righteousness: do you know at all what they did, they were on the road!!!!!Oy vey, they walked on the road, they trod on the road for Jews. ‘Rhino’ I said to him, but lucky for me he did not feel that I offend him.On the road to Nablus an old man stands, invisible. Nobody calls him, and he does not utter a word. And time passes by. And then two soldiers, amongst those who earlier sent away the taxi drivers, are leaving the checkpoint ‘for some new assignment’ and as they pass by him, he is noticed for the first time, they indicate with that well-known movement of the hand that he move two steps back. Behind the line.He founds personally and publicly the supremacy, who is master, he is getting adjusted to supremacy, says Suzy (more or less in these words).They return with a third detainee: ‘he transported them!’The third detainee phones to somebody and immediately the soldier runs towards him. ‘No, no talking’ and takes his mobile phone away. The man: ‘give me the phone’.The soldier, a lieutenant: ‘I told you it is forbidden, right? I told you? Right?’The driver is an arab/palestinian israeli from Tira, carrying a blue I.D., and when he passed Hawwara in the direction of Beth Furik he took two hitchhikers. He did not know that it is forbidden to take owners with permits from the territories. He told me that in Israel he knows it is so, that in the village they are very much in a dilemma, as many people without work knock on their doors, should they check their papers? How to cope with it, but here it did not occur to him that these rules apply, why should he not give a ride to people near their homes. I tried to argue with the soldier. To explain. That he didn’t know. And how could he know? But they knew, said the soldier victoriously.But this is their home, I tell him, ‘here they live, how will they travel, where should they go’‘This is not their home, this is Israel!’There arises the question and maybe it is worth examining, if we ever get to it, whether the soldiers as part of their training, as part of their preparation as conquerors they hear that this is Israel. That the settlements are Israel. That the road between Hawwara to Beth Furik is Israel.Many soldiers at the checkpoint. A couple of jeeps. Some of them older, officers.The checkpoint is closed. It took us some time to understand that it is closed and not just that one of those on duty is having a good time with somebody else, or is eating his sandwich or strokes the cat, because they don’t announce such intermissions, they don’t go to the waiting masses and tell them something like we have a special examination and the checkpoint is closed for a while. Why? Because whoever are waiting on both sides of the barrier are invisible. Like the shrubs and the boulders there are people standing there. This was not even hatred.Amir, the commander of the checkpoint is friendly. What can one expect of someone who passed the moral line and is willing to take part in manning human prisons of conquest. When I asked him to let a woman pass who hurried to the bank which closes at 12, and she belongs to an organization for children, even though there was a special site visit going on, he allowed it with a smiling willingness. When I explained to him that the guy who gave a ride to those two, is an israeli arab from Tira, who has an appointment for his son in the hospital at Kfar Saba and if he can speed up the check of his I.D. card and not add extra punishment he agreed, easily, without effort, and yet he allowed the checkpoint to be closed for 55 minutes while they still are interrogating (one soldier at the time so that in the meantime there are sufficient men to continue and ‘run’ the checkpoint). The purpose of the examiners at the checkpoint, so we are told, is not (heaven forbid) to question the soldiers how they behave towards the palestinians, but rather questions connected to their security and what they feel etc. The soldiers, who felt that very important people came to take an interest in them, with looks of excitement and expectation, answered on all kinds of subjects to the officers, one man and a woman, who noted down everything very earnestly and pleasantly in a large folder, and all this while on both sides of the checkpoint, 15 meters from them on either side, people keep coming, more and more, a woman with a baby, elderly, all transparent.‘Can’t you open up?’ I ask. ‘ There are enough people’.‘This is a special investigation’ tells the soldier guilelessly. As if this investigation is an excuse for this brutal abandonment of dozens of people.And then the checkpoint was opened. And all passed.When we stopped at Hawwara to eat a falafel, a young men stood next to us, and seeing our badges he pulled out a document requesting from the DCO a permit to move during the closure. In desperation and disappointment he said that they will not let him have it. He did not ask our help, only told his story.This man wrote as his reason for asking this permit ‘personal necessity’.Movement during closure is movement between checkpoints, in a certain region. Tradesmen, doctors ask for permits, and only with great difficulty one obtains them. We know naturally, that it is built-in in the system that you cannot get it, practically. Unless somebody request it in the face of his minimal nearly absolute chance, his need must be very convincing, humanitarian, festive, but not common daily, not to visit his sister, not to go to the store, not for personal necessities, that does not count, for who has personal needs?Is he a complete fool, that he does not understand the mood of his conqueror? Is he a revolutionary, subversive, chooses the impossible as a kind of defiance, standing erect, on the narrow space of freedom that remains, to insist and believe that he is eligible?It all comes crashing. That he requested such a thing. That he knows to want. Because mainly also the will is more and more reduced by the limits of the possible. He wanted the right thing, the reasonable.Which is no more reasonable, he wanted his life.