BEIT IBA, HUWWARA, Wednesday 30 June 2004 PM Observers: Ayala B., Tamar S., Hili S., Miri., Dafna B. (reporting) and a guest, Dorothy G. colour = red>Beit Iba It was the usual terrible routine: intolerable heat, people crowded in front of the soldiers. Women carrying dozing children, flushed with heat, old people who could scarcely stand and many students. We extracted from the crowd parents and babies and old people. The soldier scolded us but let them through nevertheless. There were many detainees (20-30). The ragged cloth stretched above them didn’t provide enough shade and we couldn’t persuade the soldiers to expedite the checks.15:00 – A student who’d been detained and released discovered that his student card had disappeared. The soldiers couldn’t find it. The commander, M., sent him to Nablus and told him to come back within half an hour. When he returned after 40 minutes, they searched again and still couldn’t find it. After an hour, they gave him (at our request) a note enabling him to go through when he returned to Nablus on Saturday, when he can obtain a new card.15:40 – A woman with two children aged one-and-a-half and three had forgotten her ID card at home. M. took her for [security] checking. I suggested that I call the army’s “humanitarian” hotline who could solve the problem in a minute. He refused. She stood there for the next two hours in the heat with her screaming children, until she too burst into tears. She called her husband but he had no transport and couldn’t bring her the document. The woman soldier, L.,, kept telephoning to speed up the check but unsuccessfully. The woman wanted to go home and bring the ID but M. refused again: she was a prisoner at the checkpoint. Finally she asked a Red Crescent driver and he drove to her home and brought the document. The exhausted mother and children went through.Among the detainees was a taxi driver who had crossed the line beyond which cars are not supposed to go. . He said he was moving aside for an army jeep. He claimed that his ID details had not been sent for checking and that his card was in the pocket of a soldier. M. denied this. When we left, two hours later, we saw the soldier at the junction take out the ID and give it back to him…17:30 – Huwwara South A young man approached us and said that his cousin and her three children had left Nablus two days ago and now wanted to return, but she had forgotten her ID card at home. The soldier didn’t believe this, because, in that case, how did she get out of Nablus? He suggested that the young man go to Nablus and bring it, but he refused to leave the woman alone. She was there till 19:30, and was then let through.The soldiers were reinforced by Border Policemen who were very hostile towards us and wanted to throw us out. We ignored them. Two soldiers were doing the checking. One was hostile and incited the other.One of the detainees was getting married today and had a permit to go through the checkpoint , but the soldier didn’t believe him because “he’s not dressed like a bridegroom”. When the bridegroom was released half-an-hour later, his permit couldn’t be found. R. was indifferent, but T. finally found it on the ground.At 18:30, T. sent the rest of the detainees’ IDs for checking [i.e. to be cross-checked against a General Security Services (GSS or Shabak, or Shin Bet) central list of security suspects]. Until then they had been in the possession of the soldiers for an hour without anyone doing anything about them [the check often takes a considerable time and until the results are phoned back to the checkpoint, the detainees cannot move].At 19:00 an Israeli car was stopped : in it were two Druze from Masada in the Golan and a Palestinian hitchhiker whom they had picked up at Za’tara junction. They didn’t know the regulations and didn’t realize they were in trouble. We called them later and they’d been released with their car, perhaps because they were Druze rather than Israeli Arabs.Before we left , about 20 detainees were still sitting with their backs to the checkpoint and the soldiers couldn’t decide whether to transfer them to the northern side and close the checkpoint. They called, at our request, to speed up the check. At 20:30 we telephoned on our way home and learned that all the detainees had been released at that moment.20:15 – An ambulance arrived from Aqraba carrying a man who’d fallen off a horse and been badly injured. He had no permit and they wouldn’t let him through, wanted to check him [with the GSS] (which could take hours!). He should have gone to the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters] before being injured !!!! We made various phone calls , but only after more than half-an-hour was he allowed to continue his journey.Huwwara NorthThere were few people in line. Checking was done from afar. There some 10 detainees, who’d been about two hours inside the barriers, with their backs to the checkpoint. I called the army’s “humanitarian” hotline and within three minutes the checkpoint commander, D., called me and complained that I immediately call this number without first talking to him. He explained how important it was that the detainees not be allowed to observe the working of the checkpoint, and refused to regard it as an unjustified humiliation. But from then on, we noticed that he didn’t insist that they turn their backs. Soon after he asked a soldier for all the detainees’ ID cards and released them all.