AM

Beit IbaSaturday morning, 29 May 2004Observers: Hava, Aliza, Victoria (reporting) Some 40 vehicles were held up at an unannounced road block at As-Sawiya . Further on, at the Tapuah junction checkpoint, there were another 11 vehicles waiting; and at the Jit junction another unannounced road block had resulted in a line of some 10 vehicles and a queue of pedestrians; but we did not see anyone being detained.The Beit Iba checkpoint was manned by Captain O., and an unusually decent reservist unit (decent on the scale of the total indecency of the Occupation, of course). An army officer had been shot dead by a sniper in the Nablus area earlier that morning and probably in this connection there were restrictions on movement - people were allowed to enter Nablus, but not to leave it. G., the officer in command of the checkpoint, was patient and attentive to special cases, medical and otherwise, and cooperated with us. Captain O. and the reservists kept things moving. People caught trying to walk around the checkpoint were punished by a four-hour detention at the concrete wall. (Soldiers kept them supplied with water and let them buy cigarettes, etc). People who had earlier crossed the checkpoint without a permit, and were now returning home, were denied passage. From a conversation with a soldier, we gathered that the technique was to turn them back a couple of times and then let them pass. “Why don’t they get permits?” wondered one of the soldiers. I tried to explain to him how terribly difficult it is to get those permits, and also about the pressures brought to bear to become collaborators [with the Israeli Occupation authorities]. “Well, then, they should become a collaborators,” was his reply to me. (He was younger than others.) We saw considerable traffic of trucks carrying goods. But there weren't many students - perhaps this is exam time? [ Students in the Occupied Territories follow a study week that starts on Saturday and ends on Wednesday, so that the day that this report relates to would normally be one on which many students made their way into Nablus, site of the Al-Najah University.] Residents of Al Badhan, Tubas, Al-'Aqaba, Tayasir and other villages in that area complained bitterly about the closing of a direct road to Nablus (some 20 kms. away) – now they have to go all the way to Beit Iba checkpoint to get to Nablus, which makes their journey three times longer than it need be.