Za’atara, Huwwara and Beit Furik Tuesday 25.7.06 PMObservers: Eilath, Amira, Rinat, Nadim the driver, Amira (reporting)Translation: Hanna K.The traffic is sparse, the siege and the heat close in on the population enclosed in its villages and towns.Zaatara CPThere is no queue, at the entrance to the village of Huwwara there is a traffic jam in an unexpected place . An accident and a collision between a hammer and a taxi. The police is taking place of the event. The driver who was alone in the taxi was wounded and taken to the hospital in Nablus. Burin Junction20 cars are waiting.Huwwara14:45 -From afar the CP seems calm, sparseness of passing vehicles and people. *When we approach there are rising voices of young people in queue for the checking. *Two detainees are handcuffed in the pen. They managed to open the handcuffs which wounded their hands. According to the CP commander they “trickled” behind the CP with their taxis, were caught, and are now being punished for at least 4 hours. When the commander learned that they had opened their handcuffs he added two more hours to their detention. Their third comrade escaped from the pen (to pee, according to his friends) was caught and was thrown handcuffed into the solitary confinement pen. Two more detainees were thrown together with him into this pen because they by-passed the queue of those entering Nablus. And this is how the three pass their time. 14:40 -A telephone call to the humanitarian center regarding the handcuffed men.15:14 -Another telephone call to the humanitarian center. *Only two queues are active and the checking is being performed in a strict manner according to the “fisherman’s net” procedure. *A girl soldier makes men take off their shirts and load-bearing equipment. The CP commander too is not happy about this, but “these are military policewomen, we have no other manpower”. * Those emerging from the loud and crowded queue complain about a waiting period of three hours. * Why won’t you open another queue? “I must keep gaps between the checked people, to safeguard my soldiers”.15:25 * A phone call to the center, regarding the unreasonable queue. * An officer from the DCO with a red beret and officer’s grades wanders around but doesn’t do much *Says he is not authorized to open another queue.15:40 – *A fire broke out at the road junction. It spreads quickly with the wind in the direction of the Brigade. *A fire engine is summoned and arrives a little belatedly. The Brigade is still intact.15:45 – *A young woman from Ramallah is waiting already for three hours for her fiancé who left Nablus. In a week they are due to get married, but he does not arrive. He lectures in the United States and arrived at his family’s in Nablus, and is now unable to leave. The commander and the DCO representative say that there is no chance that he will leave Nablus because of his age. *We connected her with the humanitarian center – Z., and indeed he referred us to the DCO to arrange a special authorization. *That was a young and decisive young woman who acted by herself. She was afraid to go by herself to the DCO, so the DCO representative was impressed by her independence and explained to her how to get there with a driver.16:00 -6 vehicels are waiting to leave NablusThe Beit Furik CP16:30 -The Palestinians pass the CP freely in both directions. We thought the soldiers had disappeared, but there was a couple of tired soldiers sitting there and enabling a free passage. The difference between the dense and strict “fishermen net” procedure at Huwwara and the CP, devoid of force and control here, is beyond our understanding.Hawwarta16:45 – *At the entrance to the back to back CP there is a pillbox covered with a camouflage net, in which there are soldiers watching over the “trickling” area of infiltrating and CP by-passing Palestinians. * Two young men who by-passed the CP were caught and put in a concrete closed pen. They are doomed to sit there hand-cuffed for 4 hours. *They will be released at 20:00 when the next shift begins. * The commander at Huwwara too said that now they have a special unit for catching the infiltrators.Back to the Huwwara CP17:00 – *The young man who leave the queue complain about the abusive behaviour of the soldiers. * The CP commander G. explains to us that he behaved according to the regulations. * He volunteers explanations and is ready to think with us about his task as a soldier at a CP. *The thin cover of procedural rigidity is fragile, and the detainees who are wounded by the hand-cuffs are released before the appointed time, perhaps as a result of the conversations, or the calls to the center, but G. seems sorry to see us go. *At the hitch-hiking stop of the Huwwara road junction settler young girls sit. A soldier watches over them.