JUBARA, Wednesday 12 May 2004 PMObservers: Ra’aya Y., Ella A., Hadas T. (reporting) colour=red>14:00 – The entrance to Jubara village was open and remained open the whole day. There were no restrictions on vehicles. At the checkpoint, there was unhampered movement of pedestrians, and of cars with special permits to travel during an ‘encirclement’ – a permit intended chiefly for merchants. Vehicle-owners from Shufa and Jubara were allowed unrestricted passage. The checkpoint commander was backed up by two older ‘seamline’ volunteers [men or women, sometimes of reserve service age, sometimes older, who volunteer for military service along the border between Israel and the Palestinian Authority] who were very friendly as long as we were willing to listen to their accounts of what had brought them to the checkpoint. They were less friendly when we expressed our reservations about their motives. The Palestinians were treated fairly, without harassmentWhen we arrived, there were five young detainees, four of whom were brothers. One was released after a short while, with the help of his father who presented all the appropriate permits. The mother of the four brothers was in Jubara and the father in Tulkarm, and they wanted to cross from one to the other. A., the checkpoint commander, said they had been wandering around the checkpoint and bothering the soldiers, so it was decided to detain them for a while and release them at the end of the shift (15:00?).Three women, residents of Tirah who hold blue (Israeli) ID cards, wanted to cross through the checkpoint to visit their mother in Tulkarm, but were turned down because Israeli citizens are not allowed to do this. We suggested that they contact the Centre for the Defence of the Individual and request a special permit.While we were at the checkpoint, one of the ‘lords of the land’ – a [Jewish Israeli] settler living nearby – came up to us demanding that we stop pestering the soldiers in the course of their duty. This time, to paraphrase the words of Judaism’s ancient sages, the work of righteous women was done by others – the checkpoint commander explained to him that he was interfering needlessly. Happy days…Irtah: Goods are being taken across ‘back to back’ [lorries from Israel brought goods to the border with the Palestinian Authority. Here they were off-loaded and re-loaded onto Palestinian trucks which took the goods onward into the Palestinian Authority. Thus no trucks went from one region to the other. This is a system widely used in the occupied territories, ostensibly for “security” reasons.] There were no pedestrians using the checkpoint. Qalqiliya 15:30: There were two soldiers at the checkpoint , although they checked nothing, and movement of both pedestrians and vehicles was smooth and without restrictions. They said that there had been checks yesterday, but they hadn’t received any orders about checks today.