Beit Iba, Sarra 11/3/2004 Watchers: Rutti K., Naomi K., Dafna B. and a guest In Summary: As we had thought, absolutely no men between the ages of 16 and 35 are allowed through at Sarra. A teacher was detained and then sent back the way he had come without being permitted to continue to his school.At Jitt there was a sudden checkpoint, an ambulance was needlessly delayed, and taxis which had travelled along roads reserved for Israelis were impounded. For the third day running, there were large numbers of detainees at Beit Iba. Last night, 80 people were held until 20:00; there is a directive not to let permit-holding teachers through, and similarly not to let through pharmacists with the necessary documentation, en route to examinations. The army’s humanitarian centre gave us the usual banal army answer and did nothing to help. At Farata there had been an attempt to loot. 07:00, Sarra. There were no sudden checkpoints en route. When we got there, there were only soldiers on the spot, no Palestinians. On the way up the hill we came across three lorries loaded with flowers. The drivers had had their vehicle keys confiscated because they had been driving along the roads reserved for Israelis. They had slept all night in their lorries and now the keys had been taken from them. Another lorry, from Qalqilya, had been bringing building sand to Sarra for use in the construction of a school. The driver had had all the necessary permits and just wanted to go into the village with his load. But, instead, he had been told to go via Beit Iba — which means another 30 kilometres of driving, not to speak of the long wait in the line for lorries, and who can promise him that he will get through in the end? For the end is the same checkpoint, only from the other side! No matter how much we tried to talk sense and logic, it did not help at all. Nor did the humanitarian centre. All we got is that it is forbidden to travel through from this side. A tractor came up, the driver wanting to get to his field on the other side of the checkpoint where they are setting up an army post. He was refused permission to proceed. The villagers told us the same story. No permission to go through for any men aged between 16 and 35, so all of them take the risk of being caught and walk over the hillside — risky indeed, but what option have they? 08:00. Four teachers came up from the direction of Beit Iba; they had been at Beit Iba at 06:46 and had waited there until now; three of them were given permission to go through (two woman and a male teacher of 46), but the fourth was detained. The soldiers thought his teacher’s card was a forgery because the official stamp on it looked blurred and there was no stamp on his photograph. He explained that the document had got wet. The checkpoint commander admitted that he recognized the man and that he went through this checkpoint every day. But until today, no one had paid attention to his card. (“because thousands of people come through here every day”– where exactly? And how is that we don’t see these thousands?) Nothing helped. His papers had to be checked by the GSS. The pupils would have to wait. Later, at 10:15, we met him again. He had been sent back to renew his teacher’s card at Tulkarm.The soldiers were polite and ready to talk to us . But they were sticklers for obeying their instructions and full of the usual mad army claims: “And what happens if he blows himself up after he goes through?” — Where, in Sarra! And again: “There are things that you do not know!” With all the calls we made, we still had no success, at all. 09:00, Jitt junction. A sudden checkpoint. A long line of cars coming from the direction of Beit Iba. Three soldiers, one of them covering the others, but the commander was insistent that only he do the checking. Pulled over to the side were 2 impounded taxis — they had been travelling along the Israelis-only road between the junctions of Jitt and Beit Iba. All their passengers were standing at the side of the road being checked. When they got back their identity cards they took off on foot. Most of them were from Sarra and could see their homes from here only kilometre away, but they were forced to go via Beit Iba, a roundabout route of some 50 kilometres, just so that they could go through the checkpoint there. Just driving people mad for the sake of it, like so much else that we see. Three ambulances stood there, lights flashing. They were en route to Azoun to fetch a woman in labour. But they were held up for more than 20 minutes because the officer gave precedence to checking lorries and a bus. He was in no hurry! The soldiers tried to assert themselves and check the ambulance, but he screamed at them. “Yes, but it’s a matter of someone’s life!” one of them argued. But it had no effect on the officer. That particular solider told me how much trouble he had in carrying out current policies, and indeed he did look pretty miserable.A UN car was being checked over the protests of the woman driving it , who said that UN cars were not to be checked. After about 45 minutes, one of the taxi drivers mentioned above was released when it emerged that he had not been travelling along the forbidden road at all! 10:00, Beit Iba. Lots of people wanting to travel in the Nablus direction, very few moving the opposite way. There were 40 detainees. The man directing the buses there told us that last night some 80 detainees had been kept there until 21:00 . Since Monday this has been a recurrent sight with disproportionately large numbers of detainees, all of them wanting to move into Nablus, none of leaving. Today’s detainees have been waiting for five to six hours. All our telephone calls — whether to the humanitarian centre or to the army spokesman — failed to help. Among the detainees were several schoolteachers with teacher’s cards. A teacher’s card is not enough any more. They have to have a permit (tasrich, in Arabic) to go through the checkpoint, one of the soldiers explained, but I had the feeling that he was just inventing something to get me off his back, as has happened more than once when sudden and totally imaginary “new orders” have been produced just to shut me up. There was also a pharmacist, with proper accreditation, who wanted to get to Nablus for an important examination. But, after they had waited three to four hours, they were all sent back to where they had come from, so the teachers never made it to school, and the pharmacist could not take his exam. And we could not manage to help at all, with the exception of persuading the officer to allow through a man with a bleeding and swollen nose who had a hospital appointment. On our way home, we saw that this Jitt checkpoint had been dismantled. At the request of Machsomwatch colleague we went to visit a friend of hers in Farata. His brother’s home had been broken into by soldiers on the night before last. The family had gone to visit the wife’s mother in Haris and at 01:00 a jeep with two soldiers in it had come along and, with the aid of a hammer, the soldiers had smashed the window bars and the front door (but a second internal bolt prevented them getting in that way) and had gone on to try to smash their way in through a second, side door when our colleague’s friend came running up (the house in question is isolated and outside the village proper). The soldiers took to their heels, jumped into the jeep and roared off. To us it looked like an attempt at looting. The family had put in a complaint to Kedumim police station, but the police had apparently not shown too much interest in the story. Because it was dark, our man had been unable to see the number on the jeep, but if the police really wanted to exert themselves a bit, it is no special problem for them to find out who was in the village that night. What can one do in such a case?