Huwwara, Beit Furik, Tuesday 14.3.06 PMObservers: Tami P. and Hagit A. (reporting)14:00 – Zaatara Junction. Purim. Young people in costumes are waiting for hitch-hikes in all directions, to Nablus, to the Jordan Valley, southwards. The city of Sussan was happy and rejoicing.Huwwara – the queue is terribly crowded. Men, women, children and old people are squashed between the fences and the turnstiles. In the women’s queue the iron gate opens inwards, into the bodies of the people crowded and compressed between the iron fences. In order to get out by the narrow opening one is obliged to push the iron gate into the belly of those standing behind it. (in the front turnstile there is a moving gate which can be moved aside in the track and it does not touch those standing in the queue). A girl with a tortured face is squashed between the fence and the big women behind her. A sweating crying toddler-girl is extricated from the queue with her father. Old ladies are squashed between the iron fences. In the turnstiles people push and shove and at each round a few people are caught inside. In the men’s queue there is shouting, pushing and spitting. The tension is enormous. The CSO representative is on the spot but does not do much good. The CP commander says that they have no added soldiers to the shift, but no relief is felt. When the pressure and the shouts grow one of the soldiers stops the checking and the tension mounts even more. The CP commander speeds up the renewal of the checking.At the same time a vehicle with yellow registration plates, in which there are a man, a woman and a sick baby who has returned from treatment at the hospital, tries to enter in the direction of Nablus. They are inhabitants of Nablus and say they have an authorization from the CSO to enter with their vehicle, but they are not allowed to enter. We offer help and they refuse and say they are in contact with the woman officer of the DCO.It’s hot, crowded and overburdened. One woman in the queue feels unwell, people help her to extract herself from the queue and she collapses pale and perspiring. We bring here water and the soldiers bring her a chair. She looks as if she is in real distress. She does not want to go on an ambulance and after a short discussion she is persuaded to let us take her with her friend to her house at Huwwara. She is short of breath and we are worried and and try to persuade her to go to see a doctor. She only wants to reach her home and we bring her there, at the outskirts of the village.When we return from Huwwara the vehicle with the sick baby girl is still waiting. The man says he has again talked to the woman officer, got an authorization by phone and she wondered by he was not let through. They have been waiting already for almost an hour with the sick baby. We get involved and insist that the soldiers clarify the matter by phone. Within minutes it turns out that they are authorized to pass. This clarification could have been done a long time before!16:00 Beit Furik. Immediately when we arrive a soldier comes up to us and asks us to leave the CP as there is a warning regarding a shooting attack. The atmosphere at Beit Furik is quite and peaceful , the soldiers are relaxed and banter, the CP is opened for traffic, it doesn’t seem that there is any special alert or tension. We stay at the place, standing a little to the side. People pass in a completely routine manner. There is a relatively long queue of cars (about fifteen vehicles) which are being checked with nerve-racking slowness. The soldiers reprimand us, but we go on observing.On our way back we stop again at Huwwara. The pressure at the CP has been eased, and people pass at relative speed. The terrible tension that was there before has dissipated, but the echoes of the cries we heard before are still in our ears.As a desert – on the way from Beit Furik to Huwwara we saw about twenty mountain-goats hopping on the rocky ground. Some are adult goats with horns, others are really young bambis. Heartwarming.