Huwwara, Marda, Beit Furiq – Sunday 18.2.07 PMObservers: Noa P., Judit B., Naomi L. (reporting)Translation: Tal H., Help as translator in our testimony gathering – NadimWe entered the village of Marda, passing the heavy, gray metal gate such as have sprouted overnight at the entrance of hundreds of villages, threatening the residents in with its mere presence. Overhead, the Jewish town of Ariel looms and weighs down like a heavy oppressive weight over the remnants of Marda’s lands and olive groves. All around, the strangulation fence that establishes how far for whom. Now, for the past two weeks, a band of reserves soldiers has added its presence, basking and splashing in the mire of Occupation. We enterd around 6 p.m. Most people were already indoors, shops closed. Talking with several men, we could feel the despair that has set in everywhere. They spoke about the army’s provocation children, beatings of 12-year olds, shooting rubber bullets, teargas and smoke grenades, stun grenades. A boy who has been shot by a live bullet in the leg. “Why have you come?” they asked us. “Is there anything you can do to help us at all?”When we had reported the on-goings to the regional (Efrayim) brigade commander, he responded with an immediate promise that he was taking personal responsibility for the goings-on in the village, until the end of this unit’s tour of active duty and afterwards. While we were on our way home, we received a call from the village that jeeps had entered it yet again. We immediately notified Tami who notified the brigade commander, and the forces were out of the village within 10 minutes.M., one of the brothers who had been beaten up yesterday and forced to wash the soldiers’ jeep, told us his personal story: He has a ‘magnetic card’. A year ago he was working inside Israel and making a decent living for his six children. 4 days after his work permit had been renewed, he came home from work on a Friday in a taxi.Border Patrol men stopped the taxi, took him out, did not let him take his coat and belongings, including the money he had earned – 1700 shekel which just went to perdition. Thus he stood in the pouring rain at Eyal CP until after 2 a.m., at which time he was given back his ID, his work permits were torn to shreds and he was released to go home. When he went to his local DCO (Kedumim) the next day to ask for a new permit, he was told he was wanted and would not get one. He went to a lawyer, paid good money just to hear that he was a ‘closure wanted’ man, without any explanation or reason. A year has gone by since, and he asks whether there is any point in re-applying. We promised to look into it.We stopped by to chat with our acquaintances at Huwwara village. Now, for the past week, the BPmen no longer harass the girls, say the men at the café next to the mosque. The army asked for a large Sulha (reconciliation) ceremony to be held with the girls’ parents, with press coverage. The parents refused. Sulha, they explained, is held when both parties have been in the wrong. “If we hold a sulha we admit that we have done something wrong, and this is not true. Besides, if we agree to a sulha, we would help the army to sponge away an inquest.” Sulha in their mind is to collaborate with the occupier. In the meantime the BP men continue to make themselves felt in the village, detain the young men, make them stand in a line even in the pouring rain, as the soldiers sit in their jeep and the Palesitnians get soaked, and they take IDs and make them wait. But to such measures they are accustomed, really. The main thing is that the harassment of the girls is over.Two taxi drivers turn to us for help: they hold an official form – “Request for a permit to move throughout the West Bank. It is filled out, signed and noted on the bottom of the form: “No denials, none in the past” underscored with florescent yellow ink. Underneath, another stamp specifying Denied, with the explanation “No bank stamp on the driver’s license” and “No vehicle testing stamp on the vehicle license”, signed by a junior officer at the Nablus Liaison office. We saw the licenses, stamped and valid, including all the proper documentation added to the application. The people are asking why they received the Denied stamp. We promised to look into it.Huwwara Checkpoint15:30 – the checkpoint nearly empty. At the turnstiles, where we usually see a crowded, pressed human mass we now detect the color of the sky. 3 open checking posts for pedestrians. The soldiers ask to close one of them, the Cp commander instructs them to continue working all three so no lines would be formed.Checks are conducted rapidly and quietly. Women and children, and men over 45 years of age pass via the special side line. A smiling student comes out and says, “I can’t believe this, it’s going so fast today”. No X-ray truck and no sniffer dog-cum-trainer lady.Very few vehicles both in- and out-bound. We ask where all the Palestinians are today. The DCO representative says that this morning, too, they were very few, perhaps because it was raining hard?Where is everyone? Denied for age, gender, place of residence, profession, turned back at checkpoints located even deeper inside the territory. Denied exit from their communities. Every-one??On the inbound vehicle lane, out of Nablus against the direction of the traffic moves a private Israeli car driven by a policeman and followed by a police car. They make 5 Palestinian cars – that have already been checked – move backward until the Israeli police gets through. To us the policemen called out on their loudspeaker, rather amused they were –”Well, hello Machsomwatch women! And how are you today?”Beit Furiq Checkpoint16:30 – This checkpoint is also empty of pedestrians and vehicles.We receive a call from acquaintances stuck at Al Bidan Checkpoint that their waiting line already contains about 70 vehicles, the soldiers are checking but slowly, and from our experience, as evening falls all the dangerous suspects in line will suddenly be transformed into the last of the just and will be passed through en masse without checking, and then the line will begin to thicken up a new, and so ad infinitum…