Beit Iba, Saturday, 6/8/05, AMObservers: Inbal G.(reporting), Nurit S, Noga K, Ruti A08:00-10:00SummaryThere was a lot of traffic at the checkpoint. The checking was very slow, the line was long, and the soldiers were rude and verbally violent. Details-The vehicle line was very long; people complained that they had been there for over an hour. At first no cars were passing. When we asked why, we were told all the soldiers were busy because of a backlog of taxies on the other side of the checkpoint. When the problem was solved the soldiers returned to the check point and cars started passing again. At the pedestrian line the checking was very slow and done manually with lists because of a computer malfunction. The line is very long and people waited for at least 20 minutes. The shorter, line for people from the age of 40 and for women, moved quickly. After a while the commander of the check point started letting people through who “didn’t seem suspicious” with out a check. This helped the traffic a little but didn’t solve the problem. His method of deciding who isn’t suspicious seemed quit random. We called the Humanitarian phone-line, they said they are aware of problems at the check point but can’t bring in more manpower because of the withdrawal from Gaza which is taking up a lot of their people.The soldiers were impatient and rude. The commander of the checkpoint called all the women who had there face cover “ninja’s”, yelled at people, and used verbal violence. One time he told some one “if you do not do what I say I will brake all your teeth”. The other soldiers kept yelling at the people in line in a humiliating manner. One of them said to people “without beating you don’t understand a thing”, and threatened to hit people. There are two big problems with this check point, the first is that there is no place to drink water (we had to give our own water to children). The second is that there is no table for checking bags of people entering Nablus, this means the checks are done on the floor. An elderly person waiting in line at the checkpoint told us that by Shavei Shomron there is a surprise road block so he was forced to walk 3 kilometers to Bait Iba.