Huwwara Monday 12.3 AM Observers: Mickey F, Rahcel A snait G ( reporting)Translation: Snait G.On our way to Huwarra near Marda we passed by two military jeeps and one broader military vehicle on the side of the road. We had some premonitions concerning marda. See blow.Zaatara 7-7.25Long queues of vehicles of every kind size and shape on the road exiting nablus and on the road leading eventually to ramallah. At every minute of our stay there were around 15 vehicles on the exiting side and over 20 on the Tul Karem Ramallah road. On the exiting Nablus CP there were fewer vehicles and the pace of passing through the Cp was very reasonable. At the other CP the soldiers continued checking various vehicles while the Cp commander- seemed to us as a reserve officer- checked the buses/ The checking was carried out quickly –around4-7 minutes per bus/ There were cases where the passengers- mainly women- were allowed to stay in the bus, on other occasions they were asked to get off during ID check-up/ The CP commander talked with us immediately upon our arrival, and he also said that there was a blocking of passage from Jenin.Burin-Ytzhar 7.30-7.45A flying checkpoint of one military vehicle and a temporary fencing device were stationed further up the road. A middle sized queue . pretty quick check-up.Huwarra 7.50-8.15Few people enter or exit. No detainees and the check-up is pretty quick. The bagel vendors stood at some distance but on the paved road. Few cars wish to go in either direction’ and they are rapidly checked . Somebody came up to us to say that there are problems in Beit Furiq. Beit Furiq 8.30Even from afar one noticed that the parking area was crowded with a variety of vehicles/ at the CP itself people arrived in waves, and most of the time the CP was basically empty. Two cars were waiting at the exit road from Nablus. It became manifest that all the cars at the parking lots some hundred meters away were waiting in order to go through the Cp to Nablus. During our stay there were at any minute 15-20 cars in queue. The checking of cars is very slow and precious time passes between one check-up and another. In answer to our questions the CP commander said that the Cp was open the whole night but there was what he termed” a logistic failure” in the morning resulting in that queue. Our observation of the checking practices showed that their method of doing it was to blame’. Moreover they used one path for both incoming and outgoing traffic. We were not convinced that there were not enough soldiers for doing it both paths- see Awarta below. The drivers on e queue said that they had been waiting since 6.30/7.00 AM! Mickey tried in vain to reach the humanitarian centre.Awarta 8.50 A rarther lively traffic: 15 vehicles queue incoming and 5-8 outgoing. The soldiers checked cars in both directions in two paths. The check-up ,including that of vans and lorries content did not take more than 4 minutes/ te drivers said they had been waiting around 1.1.15 hours. The soldiers said this was the effect of he CP being opened only at 7.30.Huwarra. 9.15No change from earlier. The DCO person called to have somebody go asap to Beit Fouriq. He told Mickey that early in the morning there was a long line of young women going out of Nablus, because two young students were raped that night, presumably by some militant group activists, and the Palestinian police did not dare intervene. He claimed that there had been similar incidents in recent months.9.30 -no Cp at Burin-ytzhar.9.40 -shorter queues at Zaatara in both directionsMarda.9.55 we went to the village of Marda, following a all notifying Mickey that soldiers went into one of the houses the previous night. A resident of Marda, whom Mickey knows led us to the house. We stayed there between 10-11.Both our guide and the head of the family whose house was invaded claimed that during he last year, and certainly during recent months military jeeps enter Marda daily around 18.00/.They drive through the village for long spells of time and it seemed to our interlocutors that the soldiers were trying to provoke the children and youngsters to stone throwing. This served as a pretext for the soldiers to go into people’s houses, beat up their youngsters and cause permanent danmage to household items.In the house to which we came:The military unit went in by force around 20.00. At that time there were 7 persons inside. The soldiers went through all the rooms behaving very rudely . They drove the inhabitants to get together in one room, while they went searching the others. The search was carried out savagely. All the content of the various cupboards and wardrobes was thrown out on the floor. Some doors were pulled out of their hinges, and items of furniture were damaged and scratched. The soldiers –14 in all – pushed around the women and the head of the family-a middle aged man. They inquired why pictures with writing on Al Kuds and Sheich yassin were pasted on the children’s room wardrobe. The family members we interviewed claimed that the soldiers beat two sons aged 14 and 19 in the presence of their parents. The father in particular elaborated on the overpowering feeling of humiliating impotence at that stage. They stayed in the house for about an hour. Then they took with them both sons and continued beating them. The younger was released two hours later at Mara junction. The elder was beaten until he bled in the head, as well as being hit in his chest, shoulders and belly. He fainted and was taken by the soldiers for a check-up in Ariel. He was brought back to his home only after midnight and was ordered to go at a later date to the military camp at Kdumim( perhaps in order to press him to co opt??). The soldiers left some kind of an unused grenade on the backstairs. Family members found it later and took it out of the house. They claimed that on another occasion soldiers left in another house a grenade filled with some liquid.