Huwwara South

HUWWARA SOUTH, Thursday 2 December 2004 PMObservers: Roni K., Ofra T. (reporting) Guests: Two German television journalists colour=red>We arrived at 14:00 and left at 17:00. SummaryDuring our shift, the checkpoint was manned by three soldiers (including the commander: "Don't bother me while I'm working"), one working with the women, one with the men and one who went back and forth between the lines. After telephone calls to the District Coordinating Office (and perhaps not because of that, but as a deliberate policy) some officers and DCO soldiers showed up and immediately shortened the lines [ the DCO is the army section that handles civilian matters; it generally has representatives at the checkpoints ostensibly to alleviate the lot of the Palestinians] . The soldiers would not even allow 15-year-old children to pass after they been cleared by the General Security Services. At the DCO, they claimed that there was no such order; but it was certainly enforced here .To our disappointment, we arrived as the shifts were changing. The commander who'd been on duty in the morning has generally attempted to lessen the negative impact of checkpoint reality. But the incoming commander and his men were only too whole-heartedly obedient to the occupation authorities: they were crude and consistently – although always lawfully – abusive. The presence of the cameraman and journalist helped somewhat. The morning soldiers said that the checkpoint was about to undergo extensive changes, and there would be no more need of us there..."And you can tell your friends that." And also: "Because of you, they took down the fence around the [detainees'] shed!?" Perhaps the turnstiles, too, are being abandoned, or maybe there are new orders: the soldiers gathered the women outside of the turnstile track and Y., the commander, when he was free, got them through efficiently, without the abomination of the turnstile + electric button + pressure and dangerous, humiliating pushing. We asked the women in line what had changed. They said that, because of our complaints concerning the turnstiles, the soldiers no longer push them through there [these are not simple turnstiles such as one finds in a subway station, but high , revolving gates made of steel bars: each segment is barely large enough to admit one average-sized person; there is virtually no room to spare for anything that person may be carrying , whether a child or a parcel; passage for pregnant women or for the elderly is extremely difficult and frightening]. There were between 10 and 20 detainees throughout our shift: none of them released before "enough time" had passed, i.e. not less than two hours.[Detainees are, typically, men aged from 16 to 30 or 35 who have no passage permits; recently, young women, too, have been detained. Also recently, the age at which people are detained has been lowered . 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]. From what we saw (but perhaps we were mistaken), even when the soldiers had received clearance from the omnipotent authorities, they still left the detainees sitting there. All quite legal! The DCO staff too paid no attention: "Another few minutes", "We are doing all we can." What does it matter that only a few moments ago the detainee was delayed at the Tapuah junction, or that they had been allowed through in the morning; what matter if the young man would be 30 in a month; what matter if the detained youth's only crime was that his permit had expired two days ago.Why isn't there a DCO representative here all the time and a sufficiently big team to operate the checkpoint? We asked this question of one of the polite DCO officers, an efficient man who carried out orders. "We don't have enough manpower" was his pat bureaucratic answer.At 17:00, it was cold and dark. The DCO men had done their job well and only a few detainees were left, and so we set off for home .