HUWWARA, Sunday 3 October 2004 AMObservers (and reporting): Shelly M. and Shirili P.colour=red>Although the report includes both north and south checkpoints, most of our time was spent in the south because the situation there was worse. Generally speaking the soldiers in the north were more considerate and the work load was less, but there were more detainees. The soldiers at Huwwara South inflicted punishments and closed down the checking positions, sent people to the back of the line and dispersed lines all the time, and created worse crowding than before. Huwwara South07:45 — We arrived to find the checkpoint crowded, with about 200 men, women and children jammed behind the iron turnstile. There was a separate line for women and, at times, at the soldiers’ discretion, for those over the age of 50. About 15 young men were waiting in the detainees’ area (commonly referred to in Israel army slang as the “jora” or cess-pit).[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, also known as the Shabak or the Shin Bet, the Hebrew acronym for the GSS) for checking against a central list of security suspects and the answers are then relayed 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 , or if they behave in a similarly tardy manner at the end of the process, waiting 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]. Checking was slow and conducted by two soldiers and two older volunteers. The ID cards of the detainees were sent off at a desultory pace, and the soldiers collected some 10-15 at a time before contacting the GSS. Thus, people waited at least a half-an-hour before their ID details were even submitted. Vehicles also waited a long time. Trucks were sent to the special back-to- back checkpoint some distance away – “We don’t have the time now” – and a bus driver transporting a heart patient was forced to appeal twice to the soldiers to check him before they took any notice, so he too waited 20 minutes (09:45).Generally speaking, there was confusion. The soldiers were under pressure and more concerned with keeping order than trying to reduce the crowding and let people through. Keeping order was very important to them and many people were punished for disrupting it. For example, detainees who stood (instead of sitting) in the concrete area, were not allowed into Nablus or were obliged to wait although their IDs had already come back from checking. Women who “jumped the line” were sent back with their children to wait behind another 200 people. “Hatyars” (a contemptuous term for older people) who were not over 50 were sent to the end of the line and threatened. Anyone caught trying to sidestep the checkpoint (and there were two such cases that we witnessed) was forced to kneel on the concrete with bound hands, and then taken to the detention cell and released after an hour or an hour-and- a-half, at the discretion of the commander. The confusion and disorder disturbed the exhausted soldiers and they took it out on the Palestinians in retaliation.We contacted the army’s “humanitarian” hotline at around 08:15 and asked that a District Coordinating Office (DCO) representative be sent along [the DCO is the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] . He arrived at 09:00 and speeded up the checks, but the crowding eased only at 10:30. Only then did S., the checkpoint commander, find time for us and also become more courteous, for until then he’d treated the Palestinians roughly and consistently ignored us. Up to 10:30, detainees were released about once an hour and there were always 10-15 young men waiting. When the pressure behind the turnstiles eased, the detainees’ area filled up and at 12:00 we counted 38 detainees, some of whom had been waiting since 09:00 ((the “humanitarian” hotline staff claimed two to three hours was the standard waiting time.) Among them were students (some from an-Najah University in Nablus), two sick young men en route to hospital ( the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) organization was unavailable by telephone), and a woman of 30 who’d said that there were clothes in her plastic bag but had forgotten to say that there were shoes as well! At 12:10, most of the detainees were released (seven remained) and we left the checkpoint. Some Special CasesOne of the detainees was a 29-year-old who had suffered acid burns in the factory where he works ( in Israel). He was on his way to treatment in Nablus and his face was burned.He had a letter in Hebrew from his Israeli employer confirming the details, a magnetic card and a passage permit to Israel [all of which are hard to come and granted only after quite strict GSS clearance], but he had no permit to visit Nablus and so he was being detained. He’d been at the checkpoint since 07:30. S. ignored all our requests and refused to listen to details. PHR didn’t answer the telephone. We were powerless to help and eventually he was released with the other detainees at 08:40.At 08:30 a woman arrived, completely veiled, including her eyes. There were no women checkers and she refused to expose her face to a man. We asked for a woman soldier to be brought from the northern checkpoint but S. refused: “She can show her face to our volunteers: they are my grandfather’s age and they’re not looking for women.” We asked him to show some consideration, since she regarded showing her face as a humiliation, and he was offended. “I don’t humiliate anyone!” She asked if one of us or a woman settler could check her but he refused. At 10:00, when we involved the DCO officer, S. finally softened and took her to the north checkpoint where there were four (!) women soldiers.At 10:35 a Jordanian-Palestinian family arrived from Jordan after a five -year stay. The parents held Palestinian ID cards but the three older children (out of a total of five children ) didn’t. S. and the DCO officer sent them away. After half-an- hour they were still waiting at the end of the checkpoint. We went over to S. again and asked him to take into consideration the fact that they’d had no possibility of obtaining ID cards s for the children because they’d been in Jordan and ID cards are issued in Nablus. The children were registered in the appendix to the parents’ ID cards and also had Jordanian passports so that they could easily be identified. S. contacted someone and the family went through.An Israeli-Arab doctor with a daily entrance permit to Nablus was turned back at 10:50, when S. said he had no permit. The doctor insisted and so did we. S. checked again with the DCO and the doctor went through (with his permit). Between 11:10-11:20 two families arrived with foreign passports (US and German ). They were refused passage, with S. explaining that they must send a fax to the DCO with all the details and then they could obtain permits, but, since they were flying back in a week, it was doubtful if they could get permits in time. After various conversations, it transpired that there was a total ban on the entry of people with foreign passports to Nablus, and Nablus alone. Just after 11:00, one of the detainees was shackled and sent to the detention cell because he shouted “Allah Akbar” [Allah is great!—often used by Palestinian Moslems as a cry of defiance against the infidel and enemy, Israel] His hands were untied after half-an-hour and he was sent back to the detainees area. Huwwara North 08:30 — There was no pressure behind the turnstiles and people went through relatively fast. The checkpoint was well manned: one volunteer, four male soldiers and four women soldiers. There was also an x-ray scanner truck and every bag was put through it (and then fell to the ground because there was nobody to collect it). There were 26 detainees, most of them en route to the DCO with requests to go abroad. They all claimed they’d been waiting up to three hours, but the soldier said some had been released at 08:00 and nobody had been waiting more than half- an-hour. Some of the documents were sent for checking only after our arrival. The soldiers, with D. as their commander, were relatively courteous (towards us and the Palestinians) and one soldier even helped an elderly woman to carry her parcels. We returned to the south.09 :50 — There were 15 young men in the detainees’ area. The soldier said they’d been waiting since 08:40. because that’s when the last lot were released. I don’t think that was true because I was there at that time and nobody was released, but perhaps I’m wrong. There was no crowding behind the turnstiles.At 11: 05 there were 41 young men at the turnstile, some of whom said they’d been there three hours. Neither the soldiers nor the “humanitarian” hotline were impressed by this claim. Comment: D. told us that because of the end of daylight saving (“summer time”), this checkpoint (and all the others in the district) now closes at 17:30 instead of 20:00. Not everyone was aware of this and there was considerable confusion. The soldiers at Huwwara North reminded people going through and asked us to do so as well.