HUWWARA, Thursday 21 October 2004 AMObservers: NA, MS, TB, AO and RZ (reporting)Guest: T. colour=red>We arrived at 07:15 to find the checkpoints manned by a new group from the Paratroop Corps, youngsters who had started their army service in March. The atmosphere was relaxed on both sides of the checkpoint, but this made me feel uneasy because it is soldiers like these who have recently adopted new mantras: “It’s not me who sets the rules”, “The state decided… not me” . Today I saw the combination of the awful electronically-operated and very narrow turnstiles and soldiers who only follow the orders and the rules. It is as if they were not really there… I think we’ve gone too far when soldiers apparently feel they can do nothing, they are not responsible and, for them, everything is either black or white (pass / don’t pass.)At Huwwara South we noticed a volunteer, Lieutenant E., who’d joined the regular soldiers and had taken over the women’s line. She was aggressive and unbelievably foul-mouthed, shouted orders larded with very coarse sexual innuendo, and tried to run the entire checkpoint, although the checkpoint commander, Sergeant Y., was present. E., also ate while checking the Palestinians, although it is now Ramadan, the month-long Moslem fast. Three times she locked the turnstiles of both men’s and women’s lines , telling the Palestinian crowd to move at least 10 metres away from the barrier. Nobody moved. It became a battle of wills, and the checkpoint was closed from 08:20 to 08:25, again from 08:50 to 8:55, and then for 20 minutes between 09:35 and 09:55 . After this, E. worked deliberately slowly until we left. The numbers of people waiting and the overall atmosphere of pressure increased steadily throughout this time. At 09:43, I spoke with an officer who promised to check. A few minutes later, Y. received a phone call and immediately spoke with E. – but nothing changed (perhaps because she was an officer?) When we complained to the army’s “humanitarian” hotline, the response of Sh., the hotline’s commander , was that the situation was problematic, and would be looked into…. A few other notable points:A man with an obvious eye infection, but lacking a medical certificate, was not allowed to into Nablus for treatment.The father of a young girl wanted to take her to a doctor in Nablus, but had no passage permit. He was prepared to wait while he was checked, but there was a problem— what to do with the little girl. The volunteer officer told him: “You’re not allowed to sit with the girl in the jora [pejorative army slang for the detainees’ area—it literally means “sewer”] Go back home, leave the girl there and come back – we’ll check you then.” The man: “But I need to take the girl to the doctor.” Nothing helped and he was turned away. The Awarta checkpoint (as usual full of waiting lorries) was closed. Some small or empty lorries were allowed to pass through Huwwara.When the men’s line grew so long that those joining the queue faced a wait of two hours, a separate line was opened for men over 50. At 09:30 men over 30 were also allowed to join that line.The checkpoint commander of the afternoon shift said the checkpoint would close at 18:00, in line with orders he’d received. Throughout our shift, detainees were released very slowly. Some people waited more than two hours, and by 10:50 the number of detainees here was 17 [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]. . Huwwara South The traffic flowed quite well here. The number of detainees was relatively small and they had to wait about 90 minutes on average before clearance came through . The representative of the District Coordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] , who seems to be here permanently (at least on Thursdays) guided the soldiers on how and what to check: “I recommend detaining people en-route to Jordan for security screening”, or, “If they have 20-Dinar stamps on their Jordanian certificates they can go through”.We noticed something new in the construction of the checkpoint: people using it must now enter three times… once through a set of narrow turnstiles (soon to be electronically operated by the soldiers); then through metal-detecting gates; and then through another electronically soldier-operated turnstile. And all this for the “hostile” elements who use these checkpoints: mostly students on their way to university, children travelling to the big city for medical checkups, mothers hurrying home after a day’s work, brides & grooms, fathers etc…And, as already mentioned in a report yesterday – a billboard calling on Palestinian mothers to ring a certain phone number to help preventing their children from becoming suicide bombers. Hallelujah – the messiah is coming…