'Azzun
We arrived at Azzun around 11:30. On the way we saw a queue many kilometers long of Israeli and Palestinian cars in one enormous traffic jam.
At the entrance to Azzun there were three soldiers who talked with us pleasantly, and did not fully understand how we dared go in. We told them about the family we know and about its difficult situation. They allowed us to enter and gave us their phone number in case we needed help. When we left the soldiers weren’t there anymore. They probably didn’t know until when they were supposed to secure the village.
In the village itself life was as usual: people working, women buying and children coming back from school with backpacks, just like students in Tel Aviv. But the family talked with great sorrow and concern about the people in the village of the terrorist, after the terrorist attack which doesn’t help anybody.
On the way back, realizing that all the checkpoints were closed, we were in a traffic jam for two hours until we reached a CP from which the road was free. It was a sad day for everybody yesterday. In the traffic jam there was a coexistence between the Israeli and the Palestinian drivers. We advanced very slowly, and all of us hooted at Jewish and Palestinian drivers who tried to overtake on the road brims.
'Azzun
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Azoun (updated February 2019)
A Palestinian town situated in Area B (under civil Palestinian control and Israeli security control),
on road 5 between Nablus and Qalqiliya, east of Nabi Elias village. The inhabitants are allowed to construct and improve infrastructures. The Separation Fence has confiscated lands belonging to the town's people. In 2018 olive tree groves owned by one of its inhabitants were confiscated for the sake of paving a road to bypass Nabi Elias. Azoun population numbers 13,000, its economic state dire. Its infrastructures are poor, neglect and poverty rampant. In the meantime, the town council has completed paving an internal road for the inhabitants' welfare.
Because of its proximity to the Jewish settler-colony of Karnei Shomron and its outposts, the town suffers the intense presence of the Israeli army, especially at nighttime: soldiers enter homes, arrest suspects, trash the house and sometimes ruin it, as they do in numerous places in the West Bank. At times a checkpoint closes the entrance to the town, so no one can come in or get out.
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