BEIT IBA, Wednesday 2 June 2004 PM Observers: Anat S.,Eilat B.,Debbie L.(reporting) colour = red>Summary: The reserve duty soldiers have been replaced by a new group. On their first day they were quite efficient, helpful, and at times, even sympathetic; they asked us to limit ourselves to talking to the officers who, in turn, were cooperative, listened to our requests, and usually responded positively. Wednesday, [the day that students return home for the weekly break] is usually busy, yet the lines kept moving, even if slowly between 14:00 and 16:00. At one point, there were perhaps up to 100 people. Men students waited rather longer than others (some claimed to have waited an hour). By 16:00, things had cleared up. There were 12 detainees when we arrived, and they were held up for about two hours [pending security clearance of their ID cards with the General Security Services (in Hebrew: the Shabak, or Shin Bet)]. The officer said that there was a “slow down” at the Shabak that day. His policy was to call in the ID card details by phone immediately and to release those detained as soon as clearance was received from the Shabak. The line of vehicles was long and moved only slowly, but it did move.We went to Beit Iba by way of Anabta, the checkpoint without soldiers [it is in fact a road barrier which blocks through traffic: taxis and buses may not cross it — their passengers must get off here, move to the other side of the barrier and continue their journey in another vehicle].There were many buses and taxis waiting for passengers on both sides of the barrier, but not that many people passing by. A taxi driver told us that he and other cab drivers were not allowed near the Beit Iba checkpoint even though he is from Beit Lid and should be allowed there. There is a soldier whom they call “Ha Suri” [the Syrian] and who they claim threatened them and made them leave. Our informant said that O., the representative of the District Coordinating Office (DCO), always allows them to be there [the DCO is the section of the army that deals with civilian matters and often has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to ease the lot of the Palestinians ].We arrived in Beit Iba at 14:15, learning from one of the Palestinians as we drove in that there was a tail-back of vehicles at Shavei Shomron. Later, when a B’Tselem [Israeli oganization concerned with civil rights in the occupied territories] representative came through, we asked him to check and we got the impression — though the phone connection was very poor — that things were moving. At Beit Iba, there were about 10 vehicles waiting to go though the checkpoint in each direction, with the drivers claiming they had been waiting from 45 minutes to two hours; there were also about 15 people going through towards Nablus and over 50 leaving the city. There were 12 detainees. The detainees claimed they were students; but the officers told us that their ID cards were forged or out of date, and therefore they had to be checked. One was a woman student whom we were able to push through a bit faster after the B’Tselem representative told the officers that it was a terrible humiliation for women to be held as detainees. Later, another woman — presenting what the soldiers suspected was a forged Jordanian passport — was held up for no more than 20 minutes. After the initial group of detainees were released at 16:00, there were a few new ones . Two men told me they worked at the ceramic factory on the hill and lived in the village near by and they did not have to come to the checkpoint at all. But, as they were crossing the road from the factory to their car a soldier saw them and thought they were trying to go around the checkpoint. He pulled them in and told them he wouldn’t let them go until 21:00. Somehow this was cleared up quickly and they were soon released.A man from Jenin who wanted to go to Nablus to join his wife and child told me he had not been allowed through the checkpoint. He had no permit: but said he was a lawyer working for a Palestinian human rights organization . After a discussion and a lecture by the DCO representative, who told me that those going from Jenin to Nablus fell under the heaviest suspicion, the man was allowed through. There were other incidents in which we found the soldiers receptive once their attention had been drawn to particular problems: thus, they allowed some people through on “humanitarian” grounds; the officers put more soldiers on to check ID cards , and also separated the men’s line into two, so that students were in one and older men in the other [students, and others in the 16-35 year-old group, are subject to much more stringent security checks and therefore take longer to go through the checkpoint than older men]. We left at about 17:15 : although the lines of people from both sides had thinned there was suddenly a long line of vehicles travelling into Nablus. A few hundred metres away from Beit Iba, Border Police in a jeep stopped a bus, took all the students off and then started checking their identity card numbers against a list they had with them. We asked why it was necessary to check the students again after they had just come from the checkpoint where they had been made to wait more than an hour for the check there. The Boarder Police claimed that the students hadn’t really been checked well enough and said it was their duty to do a more thorough check. We made some phone calls to see if there was anything that could be done. It seems they had orders from the company commander. I wrote down the jeep’s number and later realized that I had already noted down that jeep at Beit Iba checkpoint! The same group of Border Police also stopped several taxis. We continued to talk to them and make more phone calls and after about half-an-hour they returned the ID cards and left. As we continued home, we passed the road leading to the village of Ramin which had been blocked. A taxi stopped there and let out people with bags and suitcases and an old man with a cane. The driver told us that these people have a five kilometre uphill walk to the village because of the blocked entrance.