Huwwara

HUWWARA, Thursday 25 November 2004 PMObservers: Shalva C., Roni K., Shoshana, Yardena T., Yael E. (reporting) colour=red>14:00 – When we arrived we found two detainees and 50 people waiting in line at the checkpoint. Four soldiers, one of them a woman , were at the checking stations, and a trailer had been set up with a scanner for x-raying bags and packages.[Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. The detainees' ID details are phoned through to the General Security Services (GSS, also known as the Shabak or the Shin Bet, the Hebrew acronym for the GSS) for checking against a central list of security suspects and the answers are then relayed back to the checkpoints. This cumbersome process can take considerable time, and that can be prolonged even more if the soldiers wait to accumulate a batch of ID cards before passing them on to the GSS , or if they behave in a similarly tardy manner at the end of the process, waiting until they have a batch of GSS clearances before they release individual detainees. Meanwhile, the detainees are virtually prisoners at the checkpoint where the soldiers retain the ID cards until the entire process is completed]. One of the checkers was A. from the District Coordinating Office (DCO) [the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians], whose presence had apparently created an atmosphere of efficiency, so that the work was carried out smoothly, without the shouting usual at this checkpoint.Huwwara SouthThere were seven detainees; the queue of those wanting to go through was being managed by two efficient soldiers who got the work done. Five of the detainees were released within a short period of time. One complained that the women of Machsomwatch don't do anything.We did not observe any particular problems.We left at 15:00 after requesting that more soldiers be brought in to handle the queue, which was getting longer.