BEIT IBA, Thursday 14 October 2004 PMObservers: Ruth H., Shoshana Z., Roni K. (reporting) colour=red>15:30 — At the checkpoint on the side road leading to Qusin and Sarra, about 10 people stood in line, but they were soon dealt with. The soldiers in charge of this checkpoint simultaneously supervised incoming cars. As soon as we arrived, we had to try to mediate in a confrontation between a driver of a commercial van and the checkpoint commander D., who had not allowed him through. D. told us and the driver that his company’s name was not on the list of those permitted to cross the checkpoint, and this was why he was refused entrance. Only companies that reach an agreement with the army are on the list of those allowed through. And what can the owner of a small candy factory just next to the checkpoint do? According to D. he has to go to Huwwara District Coordinating Office (DCO) and obtain a permit [ the DCO is the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians]. It didn’t move D. one iota that the man lived right next to the checkpoint and was certainly known to the soldiers there, nor did it bother D. that the chances that the man could make it to the DCO, fix up the permit and then make it back to the checkpoint, especially at that late hour, were slim at best. D. had taken a decision , and he was not about to change his mind.15:45 — There was only a relatively small crowd at the main checkpoint. But things were different in in the detainees’ area , where about 25 people were waiting for clearance [the detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; their 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]. Here the atmosphere was clearly tense, perhaps because it was the eve of Ramadan, which was to start the following day. The sentiments of those detained were summed up by one of them who said : “We do not come into Israel, so why do you [Israelis] come along and put all these checkpoints here?” [The vast majority of checkpoints isolate one Palestinian area from another, and not from Israel.]The whole place was run, at times apparently single-handedly , by the checkpoint commander D. , who supervised the departure area, the detainees, everything.As usual, some of the detainees were quick to communicate with us, and the first among them was the man just quoted above. . He looked very restless, and was clearly on the verge of a heated confrontation with the commander. And with some reason: he had been on his way to visit his baby son who was hospitalized in a Nablus hospital , and there he was, detained for about three hours (time estimates varied, but in essence, the precise time was not really relevant .) Luckily, his mother arrived at some stage, we kept talking to him – and to the commander – and he was soon released. Another detainee was on his way back from visiting his father in the same Nablus hospital . He had been waiting for an hour-and-a-half. Next to him stood A., a Tulkarm man, on his way back from monthly medical checks, and a man from Sarra employed in Nablus. This man went through the checkpoint every day but had today been detained for three hours. He told us that initially he’d been detained at the other checkpoint (on the road to Qusin/Sarra) and brought here. It was especially distressing to see a high school boy,standing quietly among the detainees. He lived in Sarra, but was a pupil at a Nablus school and today was the first time he’d been detained . We immediately protested on his behalf, but D. said that it was too late – the lad’s ID details had already been passed for checking to the GSS.16:10 — A group of soldiers practiced some drill, rifles in hand, right next to the checkpoint, not far from the detainees.16:20 — D. showed up with a batch of ID cards in his hand. Every person he called was subjected to some short questioning. We stood next to him and listened. The high school boy was released, and also – to our relief – the father on his way to visit his baby son in hospital . But A from Tulkarm, and the Sarra man, too, were both turned back for unknown reasons. (It’s hard to grasp the logic here: none of the detainees had a specific permit, that was the common denominator; so did D. really receive information regarding each one of them?)16:40 — The detainees’ area was again crowded – there were about 30 people there. We called R. at the DCO. But there was no reply, so we left a message.17:00 — We left for Huwwara, on our way home. But with so many detainees and at such a late hour , it was difficult to leave. Soon it would be dark and some of them had long distances to travel. That was what we told D., who promised he would be considerate. And apparently he was: when we called A. as we travelled back , he answered from his home in Tulkarm.