Summary: Strict application of
severe restrictions creates a difficult humanitarian situation.
Many Palestinians with health problems, which are not immediately
life threatening, are not allowed to pass. Students are let
through. Bypassers of the checkpoint are hunted down and detained
for 1-3 hours. Our presence elicits much hostility from the
soldiers, who constantly threaten to close the checkpoint and to
call the police.

0800: About 100 people already waiting on the Beit Fouriq
side and about 12 detained Palestinians. The checkpoint commander
threatened to close the checkpoint unless we left immediately. The
DCO officer E., who was present, helped very little. Passage was
very slow, because every case had to be negotiated individually. E.
was hostile and suspicious (“They lie. If we let women with
children pass, terrorists might get the idea, that they can pass in
the company of children”!). The prevailing problem: women with
health problems or with small sick children, who had no
corroborating papers, could not pass. Getting such a paper in Beit
Fouriq costs 25 NIS, and many cannot afford it. The soldiers
complained to the Humanitarian Center, to whom we appealed, that we
were disrupting their work, as they were letting people pass
according to the instructions. (In fact, they made arbitrary
decisions who is eligible for passage.) Through the PHR we reached
a kind of “compromise”: despite the “complete
closure”, people who look sick could pass (again this involved
arbitrary decisions). DB from the DCO ordered a medical team to the
checkpoint. A jeep with an officer arrived soon after. The officer
was told by the soldiers, that the real problem were us, and he
decided that there was no need to send a medical team.

From time to time the control tower team sent out soldiers to hunt
bypassers and they returned with their prey. The bypassers were
detained for a couple of hours.

1200: we struck a “deal” with the checkpoint commander:
we promised to leave, and he promised to let a young toothless man
pass, whose artificial teeth were ready for him at his Nablus
dentist! When we left the checkpoint was almost empty. Similarly,
when we passed Huwwarah in the morning, a crowd was waiting. By
noon the checkpoint was empty.