Beit Iba Tuesday 14.9.04 AMPresent: Susan L., Lirona, Maya M., Iris R., Elinoar (reporting)07:30 – on our way we pass a rolling checkpoint, no queuing, the soldiers signal us to go on. On our way back, 21/2 hours later, they insist that we passed yesterday, how come we stayed there till now? The road is closed, they say, but let us pass anyway.In Beit Iba, unlike Tulkarm, business as usual. Is there a closure, we ask and get a cryptic answer: From their point-of-view, yes.From your point-of-view, yes.Just one story, not an unusual one: a husband and wife want to enter Nablus. They come from Jenin, he has an ID card, her name appears in it as his wife, hers is at home. Later we find out that she has a rare equilibrium condition, and because of a complicated chain of events she came to Nablus to see a specialist without going home first. The checkpoint commander is adamant: No. The woman keeps sitting down on the ground, getting up and sitting down again, crying. At this point we are not aware of her condition, or we would have called the Health co-ordinator or Physicians for Human Rights. At one point the commander calls the man a liar, the man loses his self-control, throws down his papers and shouts: “I’m a liar, am I? do you know me at all?” They are told to leave, and they do, but come back awhile later when the commander disappears and Lieutenant H., the DCO representative, takes his place. For a little while it seems that H., who listens to the man and checks his papers is going to relent, but then the commander returns and whispers something in his ear. The couple seem to give up, they start leaving. The woman wobbles, sits down, tries to get up. “Doesn’t this break your heart?” I ask H. “It does mine”. Surprisingly H., a really tough and unbending guy, decides to check the man’s ID card with whoever it is, and lets them pass. Still, this is not a happy-end and there’s no moral here. The detainees (whose IDs are being checked) ask us to intervene. We do, many times. The answer is: “I have a right to detain them up to 4 hours. I won’t keep them a moment longer than that”. This one is probably a graduate of a checkpoint etiquette course.