JUBARA Monday morning, 31 May 2004 Observers: Herzliya A., Butzi, Nini S., Zvia Sh., Roni Sh., Edna M. (reporting) colour =red>We split up, which meant that two of us were at Irtah’s Gate 700 most of the time, since the Israeli authorities were still not allowing workers to come into Israel (letters of complaint have been submitted twice about this).The soldiers only arrived to open the checkpoint at 07:10, even though this was the day that the families of Palestinians in detention at Nafha and Ketziyot prisons were to be allowed through to visit their relatives. So everything was delayed despite the huge pressure of people and vehicles at the checkpoint. But worse was to come: at 07:30 the checkpoint closed…. for an “exercise”! for “war games” that paralyzed everything! At 08:00 the exercise was over. But passage now was limited to “humanitarian cases” – sick people who needed to get to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem that day (with transport organized by Israel), and a few people with passage permits. Also the “back-to-back” truck activity began [this involves off-loading goods from the Occupied Territories brought to the checkpoint in Palestinian trucks and reloading the goods onto Israeli trucks which have just brought Israeli goods into the checkpoint and off-loaded them there for the Palestinian drivers to take away — all in the name of “security”]. At 08:15 we left this checkpoint and joined the Jubara group.06:30 — Jubara showed once again all the banal awfulness of the Occupation. The soldiers weren’t especially difficult; but the representatives of the District Coordinating Office (DCO) were rather feeble in their assistance [the DCO is the army section concerned with civilian matters; it usually has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians]. The students were leaving for vacation. One sees more children trying to get into Israel at this checkpoint ; they were equipped with plastic bags bearing random merchandise, cleaning rags and such, which they hoped to sell on the Israeli side. Some did get through, others were stopped. There is no rhyme or reason to it all. We again met the Israeli Arab whose ID card had been taken by the checkpoint commander the day before, after he had driven a truckload of boulders in the area of the checkpoint. It must be remembered that soldiers are forbidden to confiscate the ID cards of Israel citizens, Jews or Arabs alike. It is only the police who have the power to arrest, or take any significant actions against Israeli citizens. We have protested vigorously about this to the Judge Advocate General’s Office .This time we were unsuccessful in our attempts to help, since the checkpoint commander — in what was surely no more than a terrible example of a power game — insisted that the man’s identity must be checked again. For his part, the driver had a doctor’s appointment that morning at Kfar Saba’s Meir Hospital, and became discouraged and left before we managed to appeal to the army’s “humanitarian” hotline [set up to expedite handling medical cases]. A group of women, apparently workers who had been denied passage because they had no proper permits, tried to elude the soldiers and by-pass Jubara. They failed twice, caught both times by the checkpoint commander . Neither their pleading , nor our requests that they be allowed to earn a little money for their families were of any help. With all the logic of security personnel, the commander explained to us just what great influence such a decision of his could have on the rest of the Palestinians . The women were sent packing .When we went up to the village of Jubara we found that following our complaint about garbage collection to a senior reserve officer who “coordinates living conditions along the seam-line” [juncture of Israel and the Territories], a tractor had begun to heap garbage in specific areas in the village , nevertheless it is almost impossible to even begin to describe the terrible filth that greets one at the collection points. We must continue to push this matter.