HUWWARA SOUTH, Sunday 22 August 2004 PMObservers: Noa P., Naomi L. (reporting colour=red>14-year-old Nizar Shechada, of Anabta, caught a week ago smuggling bullets for NIS 20, is still in army detention. His family has engaged lawyers and he is awaiting trial (we have been informed that he is mentally retarded). The Centre for the Defence of the Individual claims this is not an exceptional case, but rather routine.We stopped at the Anabta barrier to hear from taxi drivers what new developments there might have been in car confiscations and learned that the army continues to confiscate taxis for several hours when their drivers approach the metal gate in order to unload passengers. As far as I understand, this “felony” is not the “driving around checkpoints” to which the judge advocate general referred in the order that he signed, but rather an “educational” punitive measure along the lines of “How else will they learn?”At Shavei Shomron , checkpoint drivers holding valid permits were not allowed to proceed with their passengers – these were asked to board buses and the taxis had to drive on empty. Men under 30 were refused passage and sent back.Taxis that had avoided checkpoints ( by taking side roads) were detained for an indefinite number of days. We found one such taxi confiscated at Shavei Shomron. Taxis were not allowed through Sarra checkpoint, a move intended to prevent them from using road No. 60. In the past they were permitted to drive there.At Huwwara South we met a taxi driver who’d been detained for many hours. Since he was well over 35 years old, the excuse we heard from a soldier was: “You’re a taxi-driver, I know you”. Last Tuesday he was caught in Huwwara North unloading passengers beyond the white line and his taxi was confiscated for four days. In addition, a policeman fined him NIS1200 for not wearing his seat-belt. Today he went to pay his fine at the Ariel police station, and on his way back to Nablus we found him in the detainee “pen”. If I understood correctly, the Judge Advocate General’s order refers to drivers who circumvent checkpoints, and was not meant to relate to those who commit any “felony” of which the soldiers see fit to accuse them.. Before leaving, the taxi driver told us there was no work inside Nablus, so they chance their luck and come to the checkpoints anyway.Huwwara South — 15:00 On arrival we are informed by the checkpoint commander of the “sterile” area, so that we should know where we were permitted to stand. He forbade the soldiers to talk to us, but during our shift various conversations ensued and he took a vigorous part in them, complaining that there were inaccuracies in Machsomwatch reports that he’d read. We suggested he write to us detailing his reservations.Detainees When we arrived there were 33, their number increases to 50, some of them held since 09:00![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]. Due to overcrowding at the Huwwara North checkpoint, some detainees were transferred to the Huwwara South checkpoint and apparently forgotten there. They were ordered to remain seated, but there were only two benches and the rest had to sit on the filthy ground. During our shift, they lost patience, stood up, and waked out of the “pen”, then the soldiers pushed them back inside, in an ever-repeating cycle. This state of affairs created unbearable tension. The army “humanitarian” hotline couldn’t give us an explanation for the prolonged delay. At 17:00 a quarrel broke out between a detainee and a soldier, concerning the soldier’s honour. He entered the pen, rifle drawn, ready to beat the Palestinian’s head with his rifle-butt, his eyes burning with hatred, mumbling “Now I’ll show him!” Fortunately his friends got him away rapidly, while other detainees defended the Palestinian and thus we were spared another violent outburst. Time and time again we witnessed a soldier reach close to the boiling-point that could all too easily have turned him into the next “rotten apple” in the endless checkpoint saga.Among the detainees was a 16-year-old boy with a Jordanian passport who had come with his family for a visit. In the morning (09:00) the whole family had been allowed through and was waiting for him on the north side. Only at 16:30, after our several calls to R. and the “humanitarian” hotline, did a 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] arrive and release him into the hands of his worried family. A paper confirming he had applied for an ID card three days ago had been lost at the Huwwara North checkpoint side. “No problem”, said the officer. “He will be given a new confirmation note”. That same DCO representative released another foreign passport holder, a young man whose wife was in the hospital and who had been trying since the morning to take her back home. Another taxi driver was detained for being a taxi driver…At the same time, the other ID cards were returned and most of the detainees were released, except for 15 of them. Their release was hurried, without additional questionings.Again we witnessed soldiers asking released detainees for their mobile phone numbers. Some of them refused to give them.17:25 –The remaining 15 detainees were led to the Huwwara North checkpoint in single file, surrounded by soldiers with drawn rifles. All that was missing was the ankle chain…17:30 – All but one of the detainees were released: the unfortunate man lives in Huwwara and had been detained at Huwwara South since the morning. The soldier on the North side said “I don’t know you, go back to Nablus”. We showed Sh., the checkpoint commander, the man’s address in his ID card: he took the ID and wanted to send it for a GSS check, insisting that he did not know anything about him.. Arza explained that he had just received the card back ,cleared after a check that had started in the morning. The DCO people had already left, phones didn’t answer, and Arza finally persuaded him to give the man his ID and let him go back home to Huwwara. Even Huwwara’s mayor had called and sworn that the young man was a Huwwara resident. During our shift, a settler – man of God, with a long white beard and “tzitziyot”[the fringes on his ritual four-cornered garment] down to his knees – charged at us, swearing and cursing and inciting the soldiers against us: “Call the police to throw them out of here”. He didn’t seem to mind that his young daughter heard a stream of profanities that we shall refrain from reciting here. She photographed us, while he raises such a racket that the soldiers asked him to leave.