BEIT IBA, Tuesday 31 July 2004 PMObservers: Rama Z., Dalia R., Ruth P., Adina A., Tami P. (reporting) colour = red>When we started, at 13:30, it was very hot. About 50 men, and a similar number of women, were waiting on each side of the checkpoint, and the lines were moving quickly. Older people weren’t even checked. Two soldiers, a man and a woman, were in charge of the women’s line, and the line soon disappeared. But as fast as that line dwindled away to nothing, the shaded areas assigned to the detainees became more and more crowded. Here are just some of the instances we noted:Three cab drivers who’d had their car keys confiscated, and been detained since 09:00 (the soldiers angrily denied that) were at long last released, after our intervention, at 15:00.At about 14:00, several young men leaving Nablus were detained. That made a total of almost 40 men waiting for security checks. We tried to find out if their details were in fact promptly sent [for cross-checking against the General Security Services (GSS , aka the Shabak, or Shin Bet) list of security suspects] but we could not find that out for sure. The soldiers kept telling us that there were good reasons for detaining the men, there were all sorts of warnings about imminent terror attacks, and it would be up to the GSS to decide. I heard the woman soldier read names over the phone at 14:50, and 10 minutes later most of the men were released. An Israeli Arab citizen, with an Israeli ID card, was detained as he was leaving Nablus because the soldiers did not believe his story that he had entered the town through this checkpoint. When we told them that they were not allowed to detain Israeli citizens, they said they could hold the man until the Israeli police arrived. The man was very upset at being detained and hurled curses at the woman soldier; she, for her part, yelled back that he’d be detained for four or five hours now. We did not see any Israeli police, and the man was released together with everybody else at 15:00.Contradictory orders: doctors are usually allowed through the checkpoint without permits. Today one doctor was told at the checkpoint that he needed a permit, and when he asked for one from the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) they told him he didn’t need one [ the DCO is the army section that deals with civilian matters, it usually has representatives at the checkpoint, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] . A man with a Palestinian ID, who’d spent many years in Dubai, recently returned to the Occupied Territories. He had gone to Nablus to register his children at schools , but had been detained when he tried to leave Nablus with two of them who did not yet have Palestinian ID cards. Following a very long exchange with the checkpoint commander, the soldiers realized that he had all his seven children listed in his passport, and a permit to come and go with them, and they let him through. After this humiliating exchange, he told us, he would never again leave Palestine. Some comments: There is a four-metre gap in the shade-awning over the line– couldn’t the army be persuaded to provide shade for the whole of the line? A male soldier and one of his female colleagues were giggling, touching and wrestling in front of all the people waiting there. Their behaviour was embarrassing for everyone.We left at about 15:00, when there were about six new detainees. On the way back we encountered an unannounced road-block at the turn to Beit Iba.