Huwwara North
HUWWARA NORTH, Wednesday 1 December 2004 PM Observers: Alona C ., Nina S. (reporting )Guest: Simonne R. colour=red>SummaryThere were no checkpoints on the way. Tapuah junction south was clear, the northern side had a line of five cars that appeared to be held up behind a bus that had been stopped. 13:20 —When we arrived at Huwwara, things were progressing normally! The checkpoint was not particularly crowded: about 200 people waiting with two or three soldiers checking, although there were five checking stations. Occasionally, elderly people were allowed to pass through a station at the side . By 15:00 the number of people in the queue had grown considerably, so we phoned 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] to draw their attention to the fact that not all the checking stations were manned. DCO representatives arrived to speed things up. The women’s queue, checked by a Military Policewoman, moved very slowly , so, although their queue was not very long, women waited much more than an hour to get through!! Many younger woman had coloured scarves (red, green or white) in their bags with some writing on them. Each of these was taken to the soldiers to check whether the writing was”seditious”. The scarves were returned with the comment that “It’s Hamas” or”Islamic Jihad” material . Just another way of slowing down the process of going through the checkpoint ! But none of the scarves’ owners was detained as a result of the check and the scarves were always returned to them. When we arrived there were four detainees who were released soon after. Later more than 20 people were detained, the first of whom was released after an hour and a half.[Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. 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 left at about 16:15 when four of the checking stations were in action with the help of DCO soldiers. Some detailsA young Nablus-born man married to a woman from Ramallah was detained, of course!A grandmother who’d been able to take her young grandchild through the old people’s queue (which moved a little faster), then had to wait fearfully for her daughter, the child’s mother, who took another hour ( and even that was with the help of one of us and the Military Policewoman who agreed to let her jump the queue ). An old man from Aqraba village told us that his adult daughter and daughter-in-law had been run over by a settler at Huwwara two days ago . One of them suffered fractures in both legs, the other had an injured arm; both had been hospitalized at the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus. Later, members of the Monday shift told us they’d seen the settler strutting around the policestation as if he owned the place. It’s not difficult to guess what his storywas. We will try to do something — I am not sure what … What can we do apart from reporting it here?
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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