PM

BEIT IBA, JIT JUNCTION, Wednesday 12 May 2004 PM Observers: Etti P., Shirley P., a photographer from the Israel Sun, Dafna B. (reporting) colour =red>We drove straight to the checkpoint without stopping at the unannounced roadblocks – at Jit and at the junction of roads 55 and 60. When we arrived, there were six detainees, later the number rose to 20 and then to 30. The average detention period was two to three hours. Some people had even been there for five hours.The checkpoint is being enlarged, and the dust that’s a fact of life was given an extra boost by the bulldozers. Still, the result will be more room for people. Not that it makes any difference, because anyway only those waiting in the centre, facing the soldiers, are allowed through. The soldiers didn't co-operate with us. Some of them talked to us, others didn’t. The ones who were willing to talk to us, didn't do anything. N. was busy handing over his job (he’s leaving tomorrow, together with the whole unit). M. - the incoming officer who so far is an unknown quantity - was affable, but did nothing whatsoever to help.I asked him to let through a woman and her child, who had pneumonia and a high temperature (plus a note from a hospital). M. refused absolutely. He saw no reason to take care of a sick child.The same went for a woman detainee and her two children, the older a six-year old girl with leukaemia, who had undergone a bone marrow transplant in the Nablus hospital (her mother showed me the hospital papers). Carried away by arguing with a soldier, the mother had pushed him. When I spoke with one of the soldiers, he asked me to call her over, discussed it with his friend, and said if we refrained from pestering him, he’d let her go in a few minutes. In the meantime, she should go back to the detainees' line.Fifteen minutes elapsed and nothing happened, so I spoke to another soldier. It was exactly the same story, call her over, debate the issue, and then we’ll-let-her-go-soon-send-her-back- to-the-detainees.At 15:15 the soldier called her over again (and each time she came with her two children), and told her she’d be released at 15:30. She waited near him. But when he said, for the third time, that she should go back for seven minutes to the detainees' line, I’d had enough and exploded. I couldn’t watch that complete disregard of the little girl’s suffering, the harassment of the family - backwards and forwards - devoid of any humanity. But that didn’t help either.At 15:35 I asked again. This time, they couldn’t find her permit. After pestering them, they took another look, found it and sent her on her way. And all that time, the mother's tears and our pleas fell on deaf and indifferent ears…The soldiers were obsessed with giving drill orders - "stand back there" "get into four rows" and so on, and pushing the people, rather than getting them through the checkpoint. The line moved sluggishly. We were no help at all.Six students from Jenin, who had stood in line for two hours, were sent back to Nablus. I asked S. [of the District Co-ordinating Office (DCO) the army section that deals with civilian matters and usually has a representative at each checkpoint ] why this had happened, but he didn’t understand and maintained there was no reason that they hadn’t been allowed across…nevertheless he sent them to the end of the queue. Checking my watch – I realized they would have to stand another two hours!S., who dealt with the women’s queue, used his discretion and “his” line advanced more quickly. He had no work and had come to help the soldiers, but they sent him away. He tried to help us, but didn’t seem to have a common language with the soldiers.Towards evening, some detainees were released.18:00 – A unannounced road block at Jit. Staffed by fifteen officers (among them captains and majors). It tuned out this was two groups, overlapping as they handed over. They were to replace a group of conscripts. Ten detainees told us they’d been waiting two hours (the soldiers said half-an-hour). They came from all over the West Bank, some from Bethlehem and Ramallah, and were worried there wouldn’t be any public transport to get them home.There were two detainees behind a concrete wall – blindfolded with flanelit [the Hebrew term for a fabric used to clean weapons]. At first the officer (a second-lieutenant) refused to let us talk to them, and was unwilling to say why they were there. We asked how long they’d have to sit like that, to which he answered “for the rest of their lives”. Both were lightly dressed, shivering with cold and fear. We saw that one had a cut and congealed blood on his arm. Some time later we went and asked what had happened: they said that the soldiers had arrested them at 10:00 and that they’d been detained since then. The cut had been caused by the soldiers, and there were signs of injury and swelling on the bridge of the nose of the other man (it didn’t look broken, but I’m not a doctor). The soldiers gave them sweaters.A phone-call to the army's “humanitarian” hot-line was answered by N., who had an answer for everything. She informed us that the detainees were under arrest because they had pushed flanelit into a soldier’s eyes, amplifying: “It’s like gas in your eyes!” And that’s why they deserve the detention. Afterwards we talked with a soldier who said the two were being punished because they had cursed the soldiers. I got back to N. and reported the soldier’s version, but she was unmoved. It was completely reasonable, she thought , to detain people, blindfolded, for eight hours because they had cursed a soldier. They would be left like that for four hours. Later, by phone, she said that an officer had been dispatched there and reported that no one had been beaten. Needless to say, the whole time we were there, no officer arrived (although when we left we saw a DCO jeep stopping there). And no one checked the story of the blows.Meanwhile, settlers arrived, shouting, cursing, and threatening. They phoned their friends and alerted them. When the friends arrived, they were less demented, and since we didn’t react they didn’t quite know what to do. Our chief concern was for N., our faithful driver, who had already been severely beaten by them last week. I phoned the Ariel police-station and spoke with an officer called Y. He wanted to know who we were, what we were doing there, whether we had permits to be there, and all sorts of things. When I said he should first send policemen and later I’d explain whatever he wanted, because we were in danger and had already been attacked, he said it was the army’s duty to protect us. Eventually he said he would look into it and send someone. No one arrived, naturally.Most of the settlers left. One remained, whom we’d heard phoning his friends from Itamar [one of the more radical of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories] to come join him. Captain A. prevented us from continuing to talk with the detainees and threatened that if we spoke to them he’d harass them, stressing that he was entitled to harass them as much as he liked, without having to produce a reason.Around 19:30, A. came up to us and said that if we left, he would release the detainees. We decided to get in the taxi and drive up the hill. From there, we’d see if they were actually being released. But then a car arrived, full of settlers (probably from Itamar) and in a frenzy of violence started moving straight towards us. By now we were far away from the soldiers as well, defenceless, while the settlers – with murder in their eyes – blocked the road. N. went off the road and onto the verge and, driving like a fury, managed to bypass them. We got away.Sadly, we got out of there, without having written down the detainees’ phone-numbers. There was no other choice but to phone the “humanitarian” hotline later, to find out what happened to them. M. told me that they had been freed at 20:15.I hope so.