Huwwara North

HUWWARA NORTH , Wednesday 8 December 2004 AMObservers: Tushka K., Ilana H (reporting) colour=red> 08:15 — It was very cold and rainy. There were four detainees being held because they had no passage permits . Apparently they have almost no prospect of obtaining permits because of their youth. (It’s easier for men over 30). They had already been detained for more than two hours, and if no approval was forthcoming , then they were to be sent back to Nablus.[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]. 10.00 – We were interviewed by a BBC radio team. An Israeli photographer filmed the checkpoint for a French news agency. Traffic was very sparse, perhaps because of the weather. The soldiers behaved very well.