BEIT IBA, Sunday 4 August 2004 PMObservers: Ziona S., Hadas T. (reporting) colour=red>N. came over to us, introduced himself as the commander and asked us to approach him, not the soldiers, with any problems.There were 25 detainees at the checking post. One went with a woman soldier to bring water. They said they’d been waiting a long time. We talked in Polish with a young man from a nearby village who’d been studying in Poland and was on vacation, and he said that they’d all go through in 15 to 30 minutes. He asked our help in proceeding through to Shavei Shomron and we “recruited” the commander at Beit Iba.[Detainees are typically men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; their ID details are phoned through to the General Security Services (GSS) for checking against a central list of security suspects and the answers are then phoned back to the checkpoints. This cumbersome process can take considerable time and that can be prolonged even more if the soldiers wait to accumulate a batch of ID cards before passing them on to the GSS ; the same hold-up can repeat at the end of the process if the soldiers wait until they have a batch of GSS clearances before they release individual detainees. Meanwhile, the detainees are virtually prisoners at the checkpoint where the soldiers retain the ID cards until the entire process is completed]. The only detainees held for four hours were two young men who’d tried to fool the soldiers. The two lanes of people returning from Nablus were processed quickly. Many ambulances went through after a brief check. There were three brothers waiting to go into Nablus: the two older ones were accompanying their young brother to medical treatment in Nablus. They had medical documents but no permits, so only one was allowed through. The District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) representative [the DCO is the army section handling civilian matters; it usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians], the commander and a soldier talked to people quietly, and despite the heat, the dust, the security incident (an attempted stabbing) and the crowding from time to time, there was no tension.