Huwwara , Beit Furik
HUWWARA, BEIT FURIK, Monday 27 December 2004 AMObservers: Yael B.-S., Ofra K., Yudit A.-D. (reporting)colour=red>08:20 Beit Furik The checkpoint was spotlessly clean, manned by reservists, and the equipment had been upgraded by the introduction of laptop PCs. The [ID details of ]15-25 year- olds were checked, everyone else went through freely. The local 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] is now to be closed for three months.A young man arrived with a permit due to lapse tomorrow, and was told he ccould go into Nablus but won’t be able to return. A young man who was detained at Huwwara checkpoint told us that the army had extended valid permits by three months. Nobody knew what the procedure would when the DCO was closed.09:25 – AwartaThere was only one truck waiting to be checked here.09:30 – Huwwara NorthThe checkpoint was packed with soldiers and border policemen. They had to deal with only very few Palestinians, most of whom went through without problems. The soldiers cast a cursory glance at their documents, and checked against lists and photos on the laptop screens.There were two detainees and they were released after a short time.10.45 – Huwwara South The checkpoint commander was hostile. Despite the easing of restrictions, he was very strict over everything whenever matters were left to his discretion. The checking was manual which caused delays.There were three detainees when we arrived, and eight half an hour later, all of them holders of valid permits. [Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. There has also sometimes been a downward shift in the ages affected – now from 14 to 30, but this can vary. The detainees’ 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]. We were told the delay was due to [security/terror] “alerts”.The commander forbade the soldiers to talk to us. When Ofra went over to talk to the detainees he prohibited that too and, when she insisted, he asked for her ID details and threatened to call the police.11:20 – We left.
Huwwara
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The Huwwara checkpoint is an internal checkpoint south of the city of Nablus, at the intersection of Roads 60 and 5077 (between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar). This checkpoint was one of the four permanent checkpoints that closed on Nablus (Beit Furik and Awarta checkpoints to the east and the Beit Iba checkpoint to the west). It was a pedestrian-only barrier. As MachsomWatch volunteers, we watched therre since 2001 two shifts a day - morning and noon, the thousands of Palestinians leaving Nablus and waiting for hours in queues to reach anywhere else in the West Bank, from the other side of the checkpoint the destination could only be reached by public transport. In early June 2009, as part of the easing of Palestinian traffic in the West Bank, the checkpoint was opened to vehicular traffic. The passage was free, with occasional military presence in the guard tower. Also, there were vehicle inspections from time to time. Since the massacre on 7.10.2023, the checkpoint has been closed to Palestinians.
On February 26, 2023, about 400 settlers attacked the town's residents for 5 hours and set fire to property, such as houses and cars. Disturbances occurred in response to a shooting of two Jewish residents of Har Bracha by a Palestinian Terrorist. The soldiers stationed in the town did not prevent the arson and rescued Palestinian families from their homes only after they were set on fire. No one was punished and Finance Minister Smotrich stated that "the State of Israel should wipe out Hawara." Left and center organizations organized solidarity demonstrations and support actions for the residents of Hawara.Hawara continued to be in the headlines in all the months that followed: more pogroms by the settlers, attacks by Palestinians and a massive presence of the army in the town. It amounted to a de facto curfew of commerce and life in the center of the city. On October 5, 2023, MK Zvi established a Sukkah in the center of Hawara and hundreds of settlers backed the army blocked the main road and held prayers in the heart of the town all night and the next day. On Saturday, October 7, 23 The "Swords of Iron" war began with an attack by Hamas on settlements surrounding Gaza in the face of a poor presence of the IDF. Much criticism has been made of the withdrawal of military forces from the area surrounding Gaza and their placement in the West Bank, and in the Hawara and Samaria region in particular, as a shield for the settlers who were taking over and rioting.
On November 12, 2023, the first section of the Hawara bypass road intended for Israeli traffic only was opened. In this way, the settlers can bypass the road that goes through the center of Hawara, which is the main artery for traffic from the Nablus area to Ramallah and the south of the West Bank. For the construction of the road, the Civil Administration expropriated 406 dunams of private land belonging to Palestinians from the nearby villages. The settlers are not satisfied with this at the moment, and demand to also travel through Hawara itself in order to demonstrate presence and control.(updated November 2023)
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Ronit Dahan-RamatiAug-24-2026Huwara: The school on the outskirts of town and an outpost hidden among the trees
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