BEIT IBA – ANABTA, Tuesday 17 August 2004 PMObservers: Raheli B., Roni K., Vered K. (reporting)Guests: Sharon, Shulamit colour = red>AnabtaWe went up to the checkpoint to have a look and met a Palestinian who told us that soldiers came along almost every hour to ensure that the gate was still locked and hadn’t been breached [this checkpoint is unmanned and straddles the road so that no vehicles can pass through. Buses and taxis arrive, let their passengers off, take any who may have come from the opposite direction and go back the way they came; the passengers, for their part, must get to the other side (not so easy!) and take a bus or taxi there].There was an unannounced roadblock about 1.5 kms. from Beit Iba, with about 10 vehicles waiting in line.Beit Iba – 14.30We found six detainees in the special concrete enclosure ; some of them were students [ detainees are, typically, men aged between 16 and 30 who do not have passage permits. Their ID details are relayed by the checkpoint soldiers to the General Security Services (GSS – aka the Shabak or the Shin Bet—from the Hebrew acronym ) which cross-checks them against a central list of security suspects and then relays the results back to the checkpoint; this process is cumbersome and can be further lengthened if the soldiers wait to accumulate a batch of ID cards before relaying them to the GSS, or if they behave in a similarly tardy manner at the end of the process, when results come through, before they release the detainees. Meanwhile the detained Palestinians are virtually held prisoner at the checkpoints since the soldiers hold their IDs until GSS clearance comes through] . Some 100 men and women were crowded together in the hot sun, mainly due to the refusal to let many students through; they were either starting their first day of studies at An-Najah University, or were going to receive their diplomas. They were not allowed to pass because the soldiers had not been told of the order to let students through—an order which, it turned out later, had been transmitted early that morning.Women and children were handled with relative speed by a representative of the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters and generally has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians]. He told us he had volunteered for this duty in order to relieve the pressure resulting from a lack of manpower. Nevertheless, because there were so many people, the women were pressed up against the revolving gate, which was too small and very awkward. Loaded down with children and bundles, they barely made it through the gate. From where they were standing, the soldiers could not tell if there were any urgent cases that needed to be moved up to the head of the queue. When we went over to give the people water, it disappeared in a flash; they had been standing in line in the heat for two hours, and there was no water nearby. Even the soldiers had no water. We asked the DCO representative to look into this. He took all of our requests seriously, and he moved a sick young girl (with her family), a sick young man with medical documents in hand, and a family with young children who were not feeling well, to the head of the line.But the soldiers at the checkpoint, who were checking out the men, were not as considerate. There was one in particular who kept pushing the men back and shouting in Arabic “Get out of here!” “Are you deaf?”, at the same time sniggering to his comrades: “Don’t they look like a flock of sheep?”The young commander was easygoing and pleasant, but until I asked him about the order to let the students through, he hadn’t done anything about it, even though the DCO representative assured me that he had told the commander about the order that morning. “I only take orders directly from my company commander,” he told me, and when I suggested that he ask his company commander, he finally checked out the order. The bureaucratic process was speeded up, and eventually , at about 16.00, the long-awaited order arrived.Four people were still being detained for having tried to take a detour and thus evade the checkpoint; and there were also two students detained for having moved too close. I tried reasoning with the soldier that if the order had arrived sooner, they wouldn’t have had to try to push their way through. No. They have to learn their lesson. Let them wait four hours. Notwithstanding, one of them was allowed through, and the second one soon after. The checkpoint commander seemed genuinely astonished when I told him that, as far as I knew, the practice of “educational” detention for 3-4 hours was illegal. He said he would check it out. This practice has become so much the norm that he was certain it was in accordance with orders.When we left, we met an Italian priest on his way to Qalqiliya. He said there had been problems at the Huwwara checkpoint. We gave him our telephone number in case he encountered any other problems along the way. (He did not call, so we presume everything went smoothly.)The DCO representative told us that he’d been present at a meting where it was decided to order the soldiers at Huwwara not to speak to us. Now we understand why they ignored us last week.