Beit Iba, Tuesday 3 August 2004 AMObservers: Maya, Elinoar, Susan, Lirona (reporting) and Susan’s guest from the US A new unit had taken over at the checkpoint. The soldiers ignored us demonstratively, and didn’t answer even when we asked who the checkpoint commander was. They told us to ask the officers: but there wasn’t a single officer in sight. Standing at the checking ‘sentry-booth’ was a soldier who – like all the rest – disregarded our attempts to discover the identity of the commander. At some point, it turned out that he himself was the checkpoint commander.Naturally, the Palestinians were treated even more disdainfully by the soldiers. The queue from Beit Iba was longer than ever. The soldiers checked women slowly and meticulously (soldiers in units that have served here in the past let them through after scarcely a look at their permits). One soldier was doing the checking with the checkpoint commander standing next to him. Instead of helping, by freeing up the queue and thus easing the flow, he joked with his soldier about the Palestinians passing through. “Imshi” (“go on”) said the soldier to every woman, repeating the word again and again.Although there were no displays of physical or verbal violence, it was still one of the toughest days we’ve had in terms of the soldiers’ conduct.We phoned the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO), and reported on the problems , adding that we didn’t even know who the checkpoint commander was (and he’s usually our contact person, when there’s no DCO representative around) [the DCO is the army section that concerns itself with handling civilian matters; it usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians].We overheard a conversation between the soldiers about the DCO’s phoned instruction to permit the crossing of a man holding a Jordanian passport: “You know what I think about them”, said the checkpoint commander, referring to the DCO; then: “Don’t let him through”.When A., the DCO representative arrived, things improved. The long line of women waiting started moving rapidly and the queue was minimised in seconds ( and not because there were fewer women). A. was willing to let through a family without a permit. The checkpoint commander warned him that anyone crossing without a permit would be delayed on the way back by a General Security Services (GSS or Shabak) [security] check. So we realised that people allowed to cross in the morning — thanks to A. exercising a measure of sane discretion — would be delayed a long time on their return.Detainees: Five detainees were waiting for GSS checks, under the shade awning where they’d been waiting for around two hours.Taxi-driver problem: Cab-drivers on the Qalqiliya-Nablus route, who so far have been able to drive freely, are now being stopped at the checkpoint between Jit junction and Deir Sharaf. The route from which they have made a living until now has been closed to them, without warning or explanation. Palestinian Israelis with yellow licence-plates have been exploiting the situation and have transformed their cars into “ad hoc taxis”. The Palestinian drivers have been suffering, and asked us to try to help them.