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HUWWARA SOUTH, SATURDAY JUNE 12 2004 AMObservers: Nurit L and Nina M (reporting)colour=red>Summary: There was a serious problem with students from An-Najah University, and another with men who had left Nablus the day before and were now unable to return home.We stayed at Huwwara from 08:00 to 12:20. Some of the soldiers were reasonable, some very unpleasant. A. , the checkpoint commander, wanted to force detained people to sit on the ground, which dirties their clothes. There were no big crowds.Students and lecturers from Nablus’s An-Najah University were not initially allowed through the checkpoint. A. claimed that they needed permits. He said he had never heard about the agreement between An-Najah and the army that grants passage on production of a student or employee card alone. The District Coordinating Office(DCO) representative [the DCO is the section of the army that handles civilian matters; it usually has a representative at the checkpoints] claimed that there were no studies at the moment. Students explained to us that on 14 June the summer course starts and registration is continuing. There are also exams. [It should be noted that the Palestinian university week runs from Saturday to Wednesday.]We made many phone calls to try to solve the problem. Y., from the army’s “humanitarian” hotline, was useless. In the end we called the Knesset Member Zehava Galon (Yahad) , who was very responsive and as a result of her phone calls students were enabled to pass through the checkpoint. Another very serious problem that students faced was confiscation of their students’ cards. The soldiers got very involved in “hunting” for “forged” cards, and confiscating them, and they were aided and abetted in this by Lt. I. from the DCO. As we learned, An-Najah had issued cards of slightly different kinds at different periods of time. For example, we dealt with a case of a student who had studied engineering from the year 2000 (it is a five-year course). His card was confiscated since the soldiers claimed it was “old”, but with the help of “Hamoked”– the Centre for the Defence of the Individual — the card was returned and the student allowed to go through the checkpoint.The soldiers seemed obsessed with the paranoid notion that all Palestinians are liars and all their documents are forged. Students were really hit hard by the confiscation of their cards. We had two cases of Nablus men with small children who had left the city the day before and were now prevented from returning home, since the soldiers insisted that they had left without permits. We made many fruitless phone calls. In the end A., another DCO officer, allowed them to pass. He also proved responsive to a few other humanitarian problems.
Huwwara
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The Huwwara checkpoint is an internal checkpoint south of the city of Nablus, at the intersection of Roads 60 and 5077 (between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar). This checkpoint was one of the four permanent checkpoints that closed on Nablus (Beit Furik and Awarta checkpoints to the east and the Beit Iba checkpoint to the west). It was a pedestrian-only barrier. As MachsomWatch volunteers, we watched therre since 2001 two shifts a day - morning and noon, the thousands of Palestinians leaving Nablus and waiting for hours in queues to reach anywhere else in the West Bank, from the other side of the checkpoint the destination could only be reached by public transport. In early June 2009, as part of the easing of Palestinian traffic in the West Bank, the checkpoint was opened to vehicular traffic. The passage was free, with occasional military presence in the guard tower. Also, there were vehicle inspections from time to time. Since the massacre on 7.10.2023, the checkpoint has been closed to Palestinians.
On February 26, 2023, about 400 settlers attacked the town's residents for 5 hours and set fire to property, such as houses and cars. Disturbances occurred in response to a shooting of two Jewish residents of Har Bracha by a Palestinian Terrorist. The soldiers stationed in the town did not prevent the arson and rescued Palestinian families from their homes only after they were set on fire. No one was punished and Finance Minister Smotrich stated that "the State of Israel should wipe out Hawara." Left and center organizations organized solidarity demonstrations and support actions for the residents of Hawara.Hawara continued to be in the headlines in all the months that followed: more pogroms by the settlers, attacks by Palestinians and a massive presence of the army in the town. It amounted to a de facto curfew of commerce and life in the center of the city. On October 5, 2023, MK Zvi established a Sukkah in the center of Hawara and hundreds of settlers backed the army blocked the main road and held prayers in the heart of the town all night and the next day. On Saturday, October 7, 23 The "Swords of Iron" war began with an attack by Hamas on settlements surrounding Gaza in the face of a poor presence of the IDF. Much criticism has been made of the withdrawal of military forces from the area surrounding Gaza and their placement in the West Bank, and in the Hawara and Samaria region in particular, as a shield for the settlers who were taking over and rioting.
On November 12, 2023, the first section of the Hawara bypass road intended for Israeli traffic only was opened. In this way, the settlers can bypass the road that goes through the center of Hawara, which is the main artery for traffic from the Nablus area to Ramallah and the south of the West Bank. For the construction of the road, the Civil Administration expropriated 406 dunams of private land belonging to Palestinians from the nearby villages. The settlers are not satisfied with this at the moment, and demand to also travel through Hawara itself in order to demonstrate presence and control.(updated November 2023)
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Ronit Dahan-RamatiAug-24-2026Huwara: The school on the outskirts of town and an outpost hidden among the trees
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