Beit Iba, Sunday, 5.2.2006, PM Observers: Ada H., Alix W. (reporting)14:06 Junction 55-60, No cars waiting, but there are soldiers on the road 14:11 Junction 57–60 – the usual rolling checkpoint, there is a long line of vehicles, 7 young men are being detained, they say they have been waiting for an hour, taken off a bus from Tulkarm, this is after they waited 2 hours at Jubara, the one young man that we talked to shows us his student card and tells us the just wants to go home to his mother for a break. Beit IbaWe park our car and stop to say hello to our friends in the carpentry shop, Riyad tells us that it took him 2 hours to pass the Beit Iba checkpoint this morning; he says there are new soldiers.14:44 As we approach the vehicle checkpoint there are no vehicles waiting to go into Nablus, but from what we can see there is a long queue from the other side. A bus is stopped and the young men are taken out and told to go to the end of the line to have their IDs checked, the bus advances and waits for them. We see as we approach the turnstiles that there are no detainees and few people waiting, it moves quickly. We greet the soldiers with a shalom, but receive only their promptly turned heads and backs, no response what so ever. The famous 2004 IDF notice on behavior towards Machsom Watch is down, but it is clear the soldiers have received orders not to acknowledge us at all. We see that all the soldiers are new, they were not here last week and we don’t recognize any of them. We can see that classes have resumed at the university, there are many students passing. A student girl who studies in Nablus and lives in Tulkarm tells us the journey takes her 2 hours every day.As we leave the checkpoint and reach the taxi drivers we are approached by a young student that just passed the checkpoint. We had seen him pass, but didn’t hear the conversation between him and the soldier. He claims that the soldier grabbed him by the shirt and said to him “fuck you” and he said that he hears this kind of humiliating language from this particular soldier every day when he passes the checkpoint. The young student was so angry, humiliated, frustrated, and helpless; he told us, thinking that we could actual do something. Then some taxi drivers came up to us telling us that yesterday they had been stopped at Azzun because there were people in their taxis from Jenin, there were 25 taxis turned back to Jubara and held up there from 8:00 am till 4:00 pm. The one driver said his father couldn’t believe he didn’t work the entire day, no income for that day. This was the beginning of us hearing about another week of the “Separation” for the Jenin residents. 15:39 Junction 57–60 checkpoint not there.