Road-blocks,Beit Iba PM
BEIT IBA, HUWWARA, BEIT FURIK, UNANNOUNCED CHECKPOINTS, Wednesday 14 July 2004 PM Observers: Alona C., Debra L., Tamar S., Keren, Dafna B. (reporting) colour = red>Summary: A terrible day, marked by alerts throughout the district, a closure of all the checkpoints – a total “stoppage of life”. People were collapsing and couldn’t be evacuated. Huwwara checkpoint was on the verge of erupting: the crowd had tried to break through twice. There was an unannounced checkpoint west of Deir Sharaf – 13.45 – which held people up again only 5 kilometres after they’d gone through Beit Iba checkpoint. A bullet-proof jeep had halted hundreds of vehicles, according to B’tselem staff who joined us, and the soldiers were very hostile towards us and the Palestinians. Every few minutes a soldier ran forward, aimed his rifle at the crowd, shouted at them to calm down and announced that nobody was going through today.In a field beside the road, in the shade of trees, sat some 20 detainees who, according to them and to B’tselem, had been there since 09.00; among them were women and small children. The soldiers sitting in the jeep refused to talk to us.Among the vehicles held up were two ambulances , both carrying patients; neither receiving any attention. Our banging on the jeep’s windows was totally ignored. I call the army’s “humanitarian” hotline and gave them the details of the ambulances and passengers. The soldiers saw this happen and immediately went over to the ambulances, checked them and let them through.A settler drove by in a jeep and Alona heard the soldier asking him to bring his friends because he couldn’t control “those women.” Twenty minutes later the soldiers took a detainee, who’d been there with his wife since 09.00, handcuffed him and pushed him into the jeep, telling us that he’d been going to blow himself up in Tel Aviv. If that was true, we wondered, why hadn’t he simply left his ID card with them and escaped? And why had nobody been guarding him? The soldiers boarded the jeep and drove him away. The checkpoint/ roadblock was removed. 14.30 — Beit Iba Traffic was very sparse here; there were about 20 detainees. There was no shade and it was very hot. Checking was stricter than usual, but passage was being permitted. The soldiers were very tough and most refused to talk to us. We managed only to help a diabetic from Jericho who’d been trying to reach hospital in Nablus.A., the representative of the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters and usually has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians], tried to check into several cases but it seemed that on a day like this he had no authority to do much good. A volunteer from the International Women’s Peace Service told there was a dangerous situation at Beit Furik and we drove there. From the road we could see that Huwwara North was empty: thousands of people were standing some 200 metres away towards Nablus and a tank was blocking their path to the checkpoint.
Beit Iba
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A perimeter checkpoint west of the city of Nablus. Operated from 2001 to 2009 as one of the four permanent checkpoints closing on Nablus: Beit Furik and Awarta to the east and Hawara to the south. A pedestrian-only checkpoint, where MachsomWatch volunteers were present daily for several hours in the morning and afternoon to document the thousands of Palestinians waiting for hours in long queues with no shelter in the heat or rain, to leave the district city for anywhere else in the West Bank. From March 2009, as part of the easing of the Palestinian movement in the West Bank, it was abolished, without a trace, and without any adverse change in the security situation.
Jun-4-2014Beit-Iba checkpoint 22.04.04
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Huwwara
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The Huwwara checkpoint is an internal checkpoint south of the city of Nablus, at the intersection of Roads 60 and 5077 (between the settlements of Bracha and Itamar). This checkpoint was one of the four permanent checkpoints that closed on Nablus (Beit Furik and Awarta checkpoints to the east and the Beit Iba checkpoint to the west). It was a pedestrian-only barrier. As MachsomWatch volunteers, we watched therre since 2001 two shifts a day - morning and noon, the thousands of Palestinians leaving Nablus and waiting for hours in queues to reach anywhere else in the West Bank, from the other side of the checkpoint the destination could only be reached by public transport. In early June 2009, as part of the easing of Palestinian traffic in the West Bank, the checkpoint was opened to vehicular traffic. The passage was free, with occasional military presence in the guard tower. Also, there were vehicle inspections from time to time. Since the massacre on 7.10.2023, the checkpoint has been closed to Palestinians.
On February 26, 2023, about 400 settlers attacked the town's residents for 5 hours and set fire to property, such as houses and cars. Disturbances occurred in response to a shooting of two Jewish residents of Har Bracha by a Palestinian Terrorist. The soldiers stationed in the town did not prevent the arson and rescued Palestinian families from their homes only after they were set on fire. No one was punished and Finance Minister Smotrich stated that "the State of Israel should wipe out Hawara." Left and center organizations organized solidarity demonstrations and support actions for the residents of Hawara.Hawara continued to be in the headlines in all the months that followed: more pogroms by the settlers, attacks by Palestinians and a massive presence of the army in the town. It amounted to a de facto curfew of commerce and life in the center of the city. On October 5, 2023, MK Zvi established a Sukkah in the center of Hawara and hundreds of settlers backed the army blocked the main road and held prayers in the heart of the town all night and the next day. On Saturday, October 7, 23 The "Swords of Iron" war began with an attack by Hamas on settlements surrounding Gaza in the face of a poor presence of the IDF. Much criticism has been made of the withdrawal of military forces from the area surrounding Gaza and their placement in the West Bank, and in the Hawara and Samaria region in particular, as a shield for the settlers who were taking over and rioting.
On November 12, 2023, the first section of the Hawara bypass road intended for Israeli traffic only was opened. In this way, the settlers can bypass the road that goes through the center of Hawara, which is the main artery for traffic from the Nablus area to Ramallah and the south of the West Bank. For the construction of the road, the Civil Administration expropriated 406 dunams of private land belonging to Palestinians from the nearby villages. The settlers are not satisfied with this at the moment, and demand to also travel through Hawara itself in order to demonstrate presence and control.(updated November 2023)
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Ronit Dahan-RamatiAug-24-2026Huwara: The school on the outskirts of town and an outpost hidden among the trees
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