Beit Furik, Huwwara
BEIT FURIK,HUWWARA, Tuesday 23 November 2004 PM Observers: Gigi, Adiva, Shlomit and Ma’anit (reporting) colour=red>There were 32 cars waiting to go through at the Tapuah junction. There were military vehicles in the middle of Huwwara village, where an excited soldier explained that there had been a traffic accident. A military vehicle had struck a boy on a bicycle. According to the soldier, the boy had been evacuated, accompanied by his parents and a paramedic who’d described the boy’s injuries as light. It was quiet in Beit Furik. The ID cards of those going through the checkpoint were checked through the computer.At Huwwara South checkpoint there was no line, things were being run efficiently. There were three detainees. [Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. The detainees’ ID details are phoned through to the General Security Services (GSS, also known as the Shabak or the Shin Bet, the Hebrew acronym for the GSS) for checking against a central list of security suspects and the answers are then relayed back to the checkpoints. This cumbersome process can take considerable time, and that can be prolonged even more if the soldiers wait to accumulate a batch of ID cards before passing them on to the GSS , or if they behave in a similarly tardy manner at the end of the process, waiting until they have a batch of GSS clearances before they release individual detainees. Meanwhile, the detainees are virtually prisoners at the checkpoint where the soldiers retain the ID cards until the entire process is completed]. At Huwarra North there were no detainees, but at least 100 people were crowded behind the turnstiles, apparently because of some malfunction.[These are not simple turnstiles such as one finds in a subway station, but high , revolving gates made of steel bars: each segment is barely large enough to admit one average-sized person; there is virtually no room to spare for anything that person may be carrying , whether a child or a parcel; passage for pregnant women or for the elderly is extremely difficult and frightening. ] . At the checkpoint itself, there were four soldiers and one woman soldier.The woman soldier asked the women going through to remove their head-scarves, and she then checked them physically from behind the counter. They didn’t quite understand what she wanted from them, and she, for her part, didn’t exactly understand why they hadn’t understood her. Some of the turnstiles got stuck, with two people inside in one case, and three people jammed together in the other. The soldiers brought keys and released them. Some of the turnstiles were completely out of commission. The checkpoint commander suddenly realized that only one of them was in working order; two seemed to be out of action because the soldiers had left their positions.The number of those in line dropped to 40-50 Seven of the detainees from Huwwara South were released at the Huwwara North checkpoint after being made to walk there with their eyes blindfolded. They walked slowly , feeling their way along, in a line, each holding on to the shoulder of the man in front and stumbling along in a manner which reminded one of a Bruegel painting of the blind leading the blind. Alongside them marched four soldiers with weapons at the ready. The blindfolds were only removed when the group reached the Huwwara North checkpoint. Subsequently all the detainees at Huwwara South were released. There were 36 cars at Tapuah junction According to a taxi driver, they’d been waiting for an hour, as they did every day at the checkpoints.Unusually for a checkpoint on the Green Line [Israel’s recognized international border ] , one lane was blocked and the soldiers were inspecting the slow lane.
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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