BEIT IBA, Sunday 4 July 2004 PMObservers: Shelly M. and Neomi L. (reporting)colour = red>When we arrived at 14:00, there were about 100 people waiting to be checked, and there was no representative of the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [ the army section that handles civilian matters and usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] on hand. It was very overcrowded, a situation that continued for an hour, even though we asked M. to send more soldiers to check (he did the job himself A woman student who wanted to return home to Tulkarm was delayed because she had left her ID card there. M. took her details, but she could not remember her ID number and without that neither the General Security Services nor the DCO could locate her on their files. So time passed, and she burst into tears. About two hours later, she returned to Nablus. Half an hour later, along came another woman; she was pregnant, and had also forgotten her ID card. The story was repeated and after about an hour, she too returned to Nablus in tears. In her case, an answer came from the authorities about 15 minutes after she’d left. A family returning from shopping in Nablus for a forthcoming wedding ran into trouble: the groom’s mother and sister had American passports. They were given permission to cross through, with the warning: “This is the last time we’ll let you do this!”A boy was compelled to take his computer to bits before he was allowed to carry it through the checkpoint. The soldiers laughed at those going through the checkpoint, even while they were checking them. They asked people questions in complete gibberish and then made fun of the confused Palestinians. A woman soldier asked those she checked : “Don’t you just love me?” as if to show us how great she was. M. promised to talk to them after their shift finished. One of the soldiers asked: “Why do you like the Arabs, and hate us?” M. wouldn’t let us reply, but asked us to give him the answer, saying that he would explain to the soldier later. Seven people were detained and freed during the shift.Many trucks and cars stood there waiting to be checked. The commander said he needed more soldiers to do the job. They were checking everything, every last little button was examined. –