BEIT FURIK, Thursday 6 May 2004 PMObservers: Anat S., Michal B., Menuha M. (reporting)color=red>Circumstances brought us to Beit Furik instead of to Beit Iba, which turned out to be a good thing. The checkpoint was closed and hundreds of people had been waiting for hours to go through to Nablus on a blazing hot day without water or shade.14:25 As we reached the Jit junction, we saw an unannounced road block, with three buses standing by the roadside, apparently en route to some family celebration. There were several detainees sitting on one side. We decided to go and see what was happening and wait until our driver returned from taking our colleagues to Huwwara. We talked to the detainees who said they’d already been through two checkpoints (one at Shavei Shomron and another unannounced roadblock near the gas station) and only at Jit had it been decided to check their ID cards. An army jeep, with an extremely hostile lieutenant who kept referring to the suicide bombing in Haifa, came past. The lieutenant explained that there was a new “hot” [terrorist] alert and so the checks were stricter and would last another half an hour or an hour. Then he went. We split up. Anat stood near the detainees while Michal and I stood about 30 metres away facing the bus from which the women had been taken off.Several minutes after the officer left, a private car arrived, stopped at the corner of the junction alongside the detainees: two women got out carrying a yellow-brown flag with a black Magen [Star of] David on it and attacked Anat with screams and curses. Several minutes later Daniella Weiss[ a radical Jewish Israeli settler leader] arrived with several men. In addition to shouting and cursing, the women were physically violent towards us. Meanwhile N., our driver, arrived and halted the car beside me. The men ran over to the car and attacked N., hit him in the face and tried to open the door and drag him out.At this stage, one of the soldiers intervened and succeeded in pushing the [ settler] men away, but they jumped into one of the cars and blocked our path to Beit Iba, so that we were forced to turn back. When we discovered that Daniella Weiss’s car was following us and the road to Beit Iba was blocked, we decided to go to Beit Furik.15:15 — Beit FurikThe checkpoint was closed and hundreds were waiting at the exit from Nablus and several at the entrance. It was a particularly hot day. The water tank was empty ( Had someone emptied it? There was a large puddle under it and one of the soldiers suggested that we give the puddle water to the thirsty waiting Palestinians). The soldiers kept us away and so we stood on one side and watched.A few minutes after we arrived a Border Police jeep arrived and a border policeman, who spoke fluent Arabic, began to call the men – old and young, the really elderly and fathers of children – who were told to stand on one side.Meanwhile another Border Police jeep arrived together with three more army vehicles, one of them with a lieutenant-colonel . This was a clear indication that something was going on. According to one of them, there was a woman suicide bomber in the large crowd and so women soldiers had been brought to check the women.15:45 – They started evacuating the checkpoint little by little. There was evident preference given to humanitarian cases like a couple with a three-year-old returning from hospital, women with small children and elderly women. Anat and Michal distributed water and candies to the people going through. At the checkpoint at the time there were more and more detained women who were sent to stand in an area with a concrete fence, but when that was full they were told to stand on one side.16:40 –The flow of traffic from Nablus to Beit Furik increased. All the military and police vehicles left, apart from one Border Police vehicle. However, nobody went through to Nablus.17:45 A woman with heart problems and high blood pressure asked our help; she was on her way to hospital in Nablus and had been waiting for more than an hour. Anat’s appeal to the officer got a positive response and she and another two women, waiting for more than an hour with their little girls, were allowed through. Anat also obtained passage through the checkpoint for an ice-cream van which had already been waiting when we arrived and whose driver had begun handing out ice-creams which had started melting.To our astonishment, it was only now that a soldier standing at some distance from the checkpoint began to forward the details of the women detainees [names and ID card numbers of detainees are sent from the checkpoints to a central point where they are cross-checked against lists compiled by Israel’s General Security Services –AKA the Shabak or Shin Bet — the detainees are held until they are cleared, a process which can last several hours] . We had been unaware of this delay because we were standing at a considerable distance from the checkpoint.18:00 The names of the detained men were called out , but not the women’s names. Since it was clear that the latter had been sent more than an hour after the women had been detained, we contacted the Centre for the Defence of the Individual to ask them to take some action to expedite the checks. About half-an-hour later, we were told that within a few minutes the women’s release would begin, excepting for three whose ID numbers were wrong.18:45 –The women went through. We stayed another few minutes and left when there were still eight women at the checkpoint. Later we learned from the Centre that they too had been allowed through.