IRTAH, JUBARA, Wednesday 28 April 2004 AMObservers: Nettie A., Michalina D. (reporting)color =red>Gate no.700 (Tulkarm – Irtah junction)08:00 — The closure here continues although we are already past Israel Independence Day — according to Israel Radio the reason now is the Final Four European basketball championship taking place this weekend. There were a few lorries in the area where goods are off-loaded from one set of in-coming lorries and onto other lorries that will transport them on the next stage of their journey. According to one of the soldiers, passage through the checkpoint is restricted to the following categories:Urgent “humanitarian” cases (at the discretion of the representative of the army’s District Coordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that deals with civilian matters] ); Lorries carrying goods from Israel into the occupied territories, but not vice versa;Lorries carrying essential supplies such as gas and fuel.08:20 — 10:20 — Jubara Checkpoint Tulkarm is under curfew. The soldiers’ instructions are not to allow anyone from the nearby villages — Sur, Jayyus, Ar-Ras — into the town. The only ones to be allowed through are Tulkarm residents. Similarly, Tulkarm residents are not permitted to travel east out of the town. Among those also to be allowed into Tulkarm are the sick, medical teams, teachers, and students. Despite the pressure of those waiting to come through ( between 10 and 20 people on each side of the checkpoint, in addition to vehicles) there is just one soldier , plus the DCO representative, stationed at the side of the entrance into Tulkarm.The physical conditions at the checkpoint are certainly unsatisfactory: in the burning heat there is no shade at all. Bulldozers at work raise a cloud of dust over the whole area and their noise makes it impossible for people to hear one another speak. The checkpoint commander was exhausted, impatient, rough, at times insulting, and seemed on the edge of some outburst. Again and again the waiting Palestinians placed their requests and their stories before him, not convincingly urgent, certainly sounding invented . Whatever the case, all they wanted was to get to work, to arrange something, to go and buy something, in short to do whatever it was that they had been prevented from doing — apart from some short periods of grace never announced in advance — for the almost the past four weeks. The situation seemed to be on the point of exploding . We tried to get in touch with K., at the DCO, and with the brigade commander, but neither was available by phone then. A phone call to the spokesperson of the Civil Administration was equally useless. Obvious “humanitarian” cases went through without any problem. Two men who had been illegally in Israel and were returning were released after only a short check to carry on their journey. The main problem was in deciding who was and was not a “humanitarian” case. The soldiers, and especially the DCO representative, tried, in this impossible situation, to use their discretion. Most people did get through. When we left, the long line had been reduced to only a few people. Before we returned home, we went into Jubara village where we learned from the people in the house at the entrance to the village that the bussing of the children had gone off without any problem and that the village people come and go in accordance with the permits that they have been given. What has only been partially solved is the problem of the delivery of large purchases which have to be brought in by lorry. A Jubara resident who needs to have something delivered by lorry must be sure to choose a carrier who has a transit permit valid for their village, or else he must request a special permit for his carrier. What happens then is that the carrier leaves his ID card at the checkpoint and undertakes to return there within a very short specified time. We wanted to check whether there had been any progress in the matter of supplies to the grocery stores, but the owner of the store near the hothouses was not at home and the store on the main road has been closed now for some time.