Huwwara Sth. PM
HUWWARA SOUTH, Sunday 6 June 2004 PMObservers: Sara K (reporting) 15:00: There were about 20 detainees waiting in the sun; they said they’d been there several hours. One had an injured leg and was carrying X-rays: he said he was on his way to a hospital check-up. An engineer was carrying some sort of instrument earmarked for a hospital. He said the soldiers had told him to wait till 22:00 and in any event he would be sent back to Ramallah and not allowed into Nablus.The checkpoint commander, a sergeant, was polite but tried to avoid contact with us: he said the detainees hadn’t been waiting so long.A young man arrived who said he was on his way to visit his sick mother in Nablus. He was taken off a truck, after a loud argument with a soldier who said he had no permit. It turned out that that particular soldier often shouts at Palestinians for various reasons. Another man taken out of a car protested at being separated from his sick mother who needed hospitalization. He had tried to go through with a doctor’s ID card which had turned out to be forged. He was uptight and pleaded with the soldiers to let him through because he was afraid his mother would die. A Palestinian woman from Nablus was accompanied by a couple — her sister and brother-in-law — with their little girl, who now live in the U.S. and had come to visit her. The soldiers let the woman through but detained the tourists. The sister called the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters and usually has representatives at the checkpoints, ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians], and we called them about a man selling soft drinks at the checkpoint who said soldiers had beaten his 12-year-old son who had been taken to the northern checkpoint. He said the boy was helping him to sell. The DCO representative arrived within 15 minutes and released all the detainees and the couple from the U.S. Some more foreign passport holders arrived, and all encountered problems, with the soldiers claiming that they needed special permits (for their personal safety, said the soldiers). 15:30: A young man was arrested for trying to “adopt” a small boy and hitting him so that he’d cry and divert the soldiers’ attention from the man himself who didn’t have a passage permit. He was joined by a boy who was helping a woman with a baby to drag a suitcase across the checkpoint and pretending to be her brother. 15:45: A young man arrived who claimed he had a three-day-old baby and was taking it food. He is a resident of Nablus and said he had been allowed through this morning because he’s more than 34 (the passage restrictions apply till 35). The soldiers didn’t believe him and detained him.Pedestrian traffic was lively, with many Palestinians carrying suitcases and packages. Each was required to empty out the contents. There was no table, and thus everything was scattered on the ground and dirtied. It was then also hard to repack. One of the soldiers was dealing with the women ,and generally speaking they went through rapidly. He spoke fluent English and knew a little Arabic. He was courteous but then he tired. There was a separate line for men , with one soldier dealing with it. The checkpoint commander joined in from time to time and helped out. If families arrived, men had to separate from their wives and go to the men’s line. Women with small children waited for a long time till the fathers managed to go through and join them.>> 16:00 — A young man arrived with his sister and a small boy and claimed that the child was due for a hospital checkup after surgery. The soldiers wouldn’t let them through because they didn’t have the proper permit. Telephone calls to the DCO were not answered. Physicians for Human Rights responded, but didn’t manage to do anything to help. An appeal to I. of the PHR got a response. We talked to him after we’d left the checkpoint and he said the commander had eventually let the couple through.When we left at 17:00, three detainees were still waiting [for security clearance from the General Security Services (GSS, or Shabak, or Shin Bet) on the basis of their ID card details as phoned in to the GSS by the checkpoint soldiers].
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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