Huwwara, Tue 9.10.07, Morning
07:15-09:00
At the vehicle checkpoint the checking of the cars coming out of Nablus, which are not many, is very thorough. A machine of some sort is inspected minutely and the driver is requested to unscrew some of its parts.
At the pedestrian checkpoint there is a routine that would be funny were it not so plainly hard on the Palestinians.
There we meet two new Ecumenical envoys belonging to the Accompaniment Programme to Israel and Palestine, a middle-aged Swiss man and a young woman from Sueto, South Africa. The man has taken some pictures, the soldiers threaten to break his camera and call the police. I intervene, telling both him and the soldiers that taking photos is allowed, the soldiers are sure I'm wrong. I call the Humanitarian hotline and ask that the soldiers be informed that it is so. The man is a pleasant, mild person. He continues to shoot Palestinians, but not the soldiers. "They are so young," he says, "almost like my sons."
The checking of the people coming out is thorough as usual, stuff is dumped out of the bags onto the table. At the entrance the checking is random but we observe with amazement the behaviour of the checking soldier. He takes the ID, glances at it and then at the list hidden by the banister of the booth, reaches out as if to hand it to the waiting man, pulls it back, waves it in the air, stares at the sky and hands it back. This self-amusement takes seconds, but he repeats it time and again.
It seems that the main concern of the soldiers today is ascertaining that children accompanying their parents are indeed their children. This odd rule prohibiting under- sixteen-year-old children enter Nablus without a parent and without the stub of the ID or a birth-certificate that proves it, is an old one. The connection of it to security still has to be proved. Today the soldiers seem to think this is the main security risk. A mother is sent to fetch this stub, a woman with a toddler is undrgoing a cross-examination and so does a sub-teen to make sure the woman accompanying him is indeed his mother. When we ask what does this have to do with security we get a lecture, the gist of which is the importance of the checkpoint. Once, the soldier tells me, he insisted that a mother show her baby, she refused, and eventually he saw that the baby was dead. "Two weeks ago'" he adds' "one of your friends said she'd rather see a soldier hurt than a dead Palestinian." He gives us her age (60), her name and city of residence.
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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Fathiya AkfaOct-09-2007Huwara: traffic jam on the main road
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