BEIT IBA , Sunday 13 June 2004 PMParticipants Neomi L., Shelly M. colour =red>The “good” news first: we were told by some taxi drivers that the roadblock at Anabta had been removed. The soldiers said that this road would be open for free and through movement from today. [This road was totally blocked at Anabta until now: Palestinians had to get out of their buses and taxis, make their way on foot around or under the (almost always unmanned) barrier, and then board other vehicles at the other side of the barrier to continue their journeys.] To start at the end: we drove to Shavei Shomron to record the license plate numbers of the confiscated cabs that were parked there, for inclusion in a surveillance report we are writing. At the checkpoint stood three soldiers, one of them very unpleasant and the other two pleasant and bored. We asked permission to observe the cabs’ parking lot for a few minutes, they called to check and were told to get rid of us. When we asked to see an order from an army general declaring this a “closed military area”,they simply left us to do whatever we wanted.At the checkpoint entrance we noticed a nervous-looking man, whose brother stood at the opposite side of the checkpoint. The man told us that the soldiers wouldn’t let his brother return home to Nablus, although his ID details had been cleared on the General Security Services’ (GSS) security check [ID card details are phoned through by the soldiers to the GSS — also known by its Hebrew acronym as Shabak or Shin Bet — which maintains a list of security suspects; until there is clearance from the GSS the ID cards of detainees are held by the soldiers; the check often takes considerable time]. His permits had expired two weeks ago, and although he had submitted a renewal request, he was told it would take time. The soldiers yelled at the younger brother to leave the checkpoint, but his brother told him to wait until he had made some phone calls. The younger brother looked frightened and unsure of whom he should obey. As we tried to talk to the soldiers, the checkpoint commander forced him to his knees, put his foot on him and yelled: “Don’t you move!” After telling him to lower his head, the soldier then slapped the man’s head and said : “Lower your head, that way! That way!” The moment the man tried to straighten up, the commander flourished his rifle in his face and shouted: “Lower your head, I said, can’t you damn well hear me!” . And he slapped the man around some more. I tried to get between them and asked the soldier why he was humiliating the man this way; in return he asked me if I’d come there to spoil his checkpoint for him. I said that hadn’t been my aim, but that I also didn’t see the connection between the two issues, to which he replied that he was the boss of the checkpoint and whatever he decided to do that was what went. I asked if the man was being punished merely for being a young Palestinian who simply wanted to go home, and he said “Yes!” and “He mustn’t move!”I said, “You can’t turn a human being into your puppet!” to which the soldier said that he certainly could and that if he had to he would hurt the man in such a manner that he wouldn’t be able to move for the pain. At this point, the young man gave up and said that he didn’t want to go home anymore, and that everything was alright and he wouldn’tt cross the checkpoint. One of the soldiers said to me: “What, do you want us to let him pass?”I said I wasn’t asking them to change the rules, but I didn’t see why they needed to humiliate a man; wasn’t it bad enough that they weren’t letting him go home? To this the soldier replied that there was nothing to be done about it : this was the only way “they” [the Palestinians] understood: “Just a little show of power and they immediately give up”. But then, before we could count ten, the soldiers suddenly called over the young man who had just had to be so humiliated so that he would “understand” that there was no way he would be allowed to cross through the checkpoint; he was free to go through and then proceed home. Figure that one out! So, both the brothers went home. N., our driver, gave them our phone numbers so that they can contact us later when we will help them file a complaint. When we talked to the army’s “humanitarian” hotline later they said that the soldiers had told them that they were only acting according to the rules and that the young man had tried to go through the checkpoint although they had told him not to, so they, in turn, had tried to handcuff him. As for Beit Iba — all was routine: the bulldozers were hard at work and the checkpoint is constantly changing. There is now a special cabin for body checks. Everything is very ugly. A 29-year-old woman tried to leave Nablus with three young girls whom she claimed were her daughters. Her ID card records her as a single woman. After 10 minutes of questioning, she admitted she was their aunt. There followed the usual questions:”Why did you lie?” etc.; a body search for all of them; an “educational” conversation with the officer representing the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters, and that usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] and then they were off on their way (“They should learn not to lie…”)A young man accompanying his sick mother was detained (for being young, i.e. he falls within the suspect age-group of 16 to 30). He insisted that his mother was blind, sick and barely able to stand; the mother begged the soldiers to let him go and we added our pleas to hers. Half-an-hour later, the checkpoint commander sent them home. Detainees came and went, with between three and 13 waiting at any given time. Mostly they were young men whom we stood no chance of helping. They claimed to have been detained for four hours [awaiting security clearance from the GSS], but as far as we could see the average waiting time was between half-an-hour and two-and-a-half hours. But time stands still here. A teacher living in Nablus wanted to bring his young brother home, his own wife was at the bedside of her sister in hospital, and he needed the younger brother. The soldiers wouldn’t allow it and nothing we could do helped. A 28-year-old man with his three-year-old sick daughter had gone to Nablus in the morning to take her for medical tests at the hospital. He was detained on his way back and waited two hours with his small child until he got GSS security clearance — none of our phone calls helped. And immediately after that we went to Shavei Shomron…….