Beit Iba
Beit Iba, Tuesday, 30.8.05, AMObservers: Maya M, Elinoar B (reporting)No roadblocks en route, not even in Anabta. Upon arrival we found an almost empty checkpoint, and only one soldier on each side. An hour later there were many more people and vehicles, and a few more soldiers to check them, but things were moving fairly fast.We had time today to look around us at the ugliness of the compound. There was a nauseous smell – a carcass or at least some rotten garbage, the air was suffused with dust from the quarry. We stood facing the piled-up construction recalling Brazilian pavellas or Indian shanti huts, plank on plank, sheet metal, graffiti praising Charub battalion, and on top – bizaarely – Big Brother’s watchtower. Truly, I don’t know which is better – this, or the chilly order of Ephraim Gate, but throughout the West Bank there is evidence of the environmental ugliness Israel brings to the occupied territories: the scars and wounds on the rolling hills, the endless roads, the barbed wire and walls. A fitting backdrop to human suffering.
Beit Iba
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A perimeter checkpoint west of the city of Nablus. Operated from 2001 to 2009 as one of the four permanent checkpoints closing on Nablus: Beit Furik and Awarta to the east and Hawara to the south. A pedestrian-only checkpoint, where MachsomWatch volunteers were present daily for several hours in the morning and afternoon to document the thousands of Palestinians waiting for hours in long queues with no shelter in the heat or rain, to leave the district city for anywhere else in the West Bank. From March 2009, as part of the easing of the Palestinian movement in the West Bank, it was abolished, without a trace, and without any adverse change in the security situation.
Jun-4-2014Beit-Iba checkpoint 22.04.04
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