BEIT IBA, Wednesday 18 August 2004 PMObservers: Sara P., Ella A., Hadas T. (reporting)On the way to Beit Iba, we noticed that the Jubara checkpoint was open for traffic, and that at the entrance to Ramin village —a new earth mound barred entry for vehicles.There was very sparse traffic from Nablus, but about 40 students were being held in the roofed detainees’ area. The soldiers said these were the orders from today. Because of the Israel army operation in Nablus and the fact that this was the last day for any mass passage of students till the beginning of the next academic year, it was feared that wanted men might infiltrate the group of students applying to leave Nablus. So student cards were not considered sufficient and everyone without a permit was checked. Everyone else went through without difficulty. [ The detainees are, typically, men aged between 16 and 30 who do not have passage permits. Their ID card details are relayed by the checkpoint soldiers to the General Security Services (GSS – aka the Shabak or the Shin Bet, 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, before they release the detainees. Meanwhile the detained Palestinians are virtually held prisoner at the checkpoints since the soldiers hold their ID cards until GSS clearance comes through] .The soldiers, on their next to last day at the checkpoint, were trying, with our encouragement, to act rapidly and not to detain unnecessarily. The average stay for detainees was about an hour, mainly because of the nature of the checking procedure and the large number of detainees. Because of the changeover at the checkpoints there will probably be problems in the next few days both in the way the Palestinians are treated and in matters of communication between the two sides. We left after three hours when there were almost no detainees left and there was less and less traffic from Nablus.