BEIT IBA, Tuesday 8 June 2004 PMObservers: Hagar, Petahia, Tami (reporting) and Ruthi, a guest colour=red>There were no unannounced roadblocks on the road from Tapuah junction to Beit Iba. On the western side of Beit Iba, people were entering rapidly. Although nobody was waiting in line, a soldier had his weapon trained on the few arrivals.At the exit from Nablus, hundreds of people were waiting in the blazing sun. There was no soldier with aimed weapon, but the passage was closed. The checkpoint commander explained that because of the work being carried out on the passage track (removal of one of the barriers by a crane and some electrical work), it was dangerous to let people through in case the concrete barrier collapsed. The people waiting were very irritable. We persuaded the commander to halt the work from time to time and let people through.A., the representative of the District Coordinating Office (DCO) [the section of the army that handles civilian matters; it usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to ease the lot of the Palestinians] and the 2nd Lt. were persuaded and within two-and-a-half hours hundreds went through. Problems which arose were dealt with relatively rapidly. They still hadn’t succeed in removing the barrier by the time we left. When we asked why the work was being done at such a busy time, we received no answer. A new, but not too dense line beside the watchtower was dealt with only when we called it to the attention of the commander.There was a very small shelter for detainees which provided shade for five people when we arrived, but when the number swelled to 20, most of them were forced to wait in the blazing sun; the 2nd Lt. and the DCO representative had no time to deal with them. Before we left, they were all released. One of them, a 10th-grade high school pupil, showed us a fragment of a computer card which he said the soldiers had broken when he went through a few days ago. We contacted the army’s “humanitarian” hotline whose staff advised us to suggest that he submit a complaint to the police.On the way back, we stopped at Jubara checkpoint to find out what had happened to three detainees there. There was no shelter from the sun. The commander told us reluctantly that their ID card details were still being checked [the cross-checking, by telephone, against a central list of security suspects maintained by the General Security Services can often take up to four hours] . Since none of the detainees had a cellular phone, we were unable to follow up.